Smoking

Smoking

Tobacco was introduced to Europe by Columbus upon his return from the New World. As the habit of smoking spread throughout Europe, Russia, Africa, and the Orient, it met with formidable opposition from rulers, who instigated periodic attacks upon it. In 1604, King James i of England issued a proclamation called “A Counterblast to Tobacco.” He and others, however, were unsuccessful in eradicating the use of tobacco, which soon became an export of considerable economic importance to the new American colonies. In the United States tobacco remains economically important; it contributes to national income, and its yield of tax revenue plays a significant role in the budget of the federal government.

Although social and religious controversies occasionally have flared between those segments of society which found smoking pleasurable and those which believed it to be a foul-smelling, unnatural, and loathsome habit, scientists showed little interest in the effects of smoking for some five centuries after its introduction to Europe.

In 1900 vital statisticians reported an increase in the incidence of cancer of the lung. Beginning in 1930, scientists from various parts of the world have reported vital statistics suggesting a relationship between certain populations’ increasing consumption of cigarettes and an increased incidence of lung cancer, heart disease, and other illnesses in the same populations. Since the mid–1950s these results have become sufficiently convincing to cause the following health agencies to declare that smoking is a significant health hazard: the British Medical Research Council; the cancer societies of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, Finland, and the Netherlands; the American Cancer Society; the American Heart Association; the Joint Tuberculosis Council of Great Britain; and the Canadian National Department of Health and Welfare. However, cigarette manufacturers have steadfastly maintained that the evidence linking cigarettes and disease is not conclusive.

In any study of smoking, an initial problem arises with regard to the definition of who is a cigarette smoker and, even more problematic, who is an ex-smoker, light smoker, medium smoker, or heavy smoker. There is no precise definition as to what are the actual behavioral (motions), physiological, or psychological referents of smoking. For example, do all individuals who “smoke heavily” inhale to the same extent? One individual might light 40 cigarettes a day but puff only one-eighth of each, whereas another individual, claiming to smoke only 12 cigarettes a day, could inhale each of these down to the last quarter inch. We also do not know the relationship between reported smoking (through verbal self-report or responses to a questionnaire) and actual smoking. Data relevant to these preliminary questions would contribute greatly to the precision of subsequent research on smoking.

Within the past decade social scientists have become interested in the smoker, as evidenced by the appearance of numerous surveys and other research reports on the psychosocial characteristics of smokers. The vast majority of these have focused only on cigarette smokers, and the findings reported below will relate primarily to them.

The reader interested in a detailed review of this subject may consult five reviews that include comprehensive bibliographies of the original literature. Two of the reviews appeared in 1960—one in the United States (Matarazzo & Saslow 1960), and one in Scotland (Kissen 1960). A third review was published by Lawton (1962) and a fourth by Horn (1963). The most recent review (Hochbaum 1964) was prepared as part of the highly publicized report of the advisory committee to the surgeon general of the United States Public Health Service.

Several individual studies are of especial significance because of their scope, sampling, or over-all design. Haenszel, Shimkin, and Miller (1956) surveyed the smoking habits of a cross section (40,000) of the total population of American men and women 18 years of age and older. Sackrin and Conover (1957) followed this by further study of 18,000 of the same 40,000 individuals. Kallner (1958) studied the entire population of Israel. Lilienfeld (1959) studied 4,400 adults in Buffalo, New York. Horn and his associates (1959) polled the total population of high school students (22,000) in Portland, Oregon, while Salber and her associates (see Salber & MacMahon 1961; Salber et al. 1962; Salber, Welsh, & Taylor 1963; Salber & Worcester 1964; Salber et al. 1961; 1963) have published a series of related studies of 6,810 high school students in Newton, Massachusetts. In England, Both well (1959) conducted a study of the smoking habits of 8,314 Oxfordshire schoolchildren, while Chave and Schilling and their associates (1959) studied another group of 3,500 London youngsters. Also, Eysenck and his co-workers (1960) attempted to measure some personality characteristics of a stratified sample of 2,360 smoking and nonsmoking adult British males and followed this with a more detailed study of 3,194 additional males (Eysenck 1963).

Demographic variables. Although social scientists have only recently begun to study the cigarette smoker, there already seem to be a number of variables whch are consistently found to be associated with smoking. These variables are reviewed below, although, because of space limitations, no attempt has been made to review the findings of every study on each variable. Rather, the more significant or better-established findings of a particular study have been presented, and the original articles can be referred to for more detail. The reader interested in the attempts of health educators and social scientists to understand why people smoke and in some of the methods currently being explored in the United States to help smokers give up their habit should consult the report by Mausner and Platt (1966).

Age, sex, and marital status. With respect to age, data from both sides of the Atlantic are similar and indicate that regular smoking usually begins in mid-adolescence to late adolescence, although a small percentage of youngsters start cigarette smoking earlier. Boys are inclined to smoke somewhat earlier and more heavily than girls (Bothwell 1959; Cartwright et al. 1959; Haenszel et al. 1956; Hochbaum 1964; Horn et al. 1959; Horn 1963; Kissen 1960, p. 368; Matarazzo & Saslow 1960; and Salber et al. 1961). Among women, the incidence of smoking is increasing. In their study in Newton, Massachusetts, Salber and Worcester (1964) report that the number of women, particularly Jewish women, who smoke may soon exceed the number of men who smoke.

Among both sexes and all ages, there is a greater percentage of smoking among divorced and widowed individuals than among those either married or never married. Although this has been established for the United States, comparable data for other countries are not available.

Income, occupation, and education. The five reviews suggest that yearly income is not related in any consistent manner to smoking. However, socioeconomic class, when defined only in terms of occupational and educational level, does appear to bear a consistent relationship to smoking; individuals at the lowest occupational levels start to smoke earlier and in greater numbers than those in all other groups. For example, white-collar groups (professional workers, managers, and so forth) typically contain fewer smokers than are found among craftsmen, foremen, salespersons, and similar groups. Possibly it is because some individuals in the latter groups have higher yearly incomes than do some white-collar workers that the relationship between smoking and socioeconomic class, more broadly defined to include income and place of residence as well, is not clearly established.

Apparently there is no clear linear relationship between the highest educational level attained by maturity and smoking (see especially Lilienfeld 1959). However, among high school students those with highest achievement and those in college preparatory courses are considerably less likely to smoke than those in business and technical courses. An interesting twenty-year longitudinal study of a group of Harvard undergraduates indicates that individuals who major in the arts and letters, education, and social sciences later become smokers in greater numbers than do students whose career choice is in the physical sciences (Heath 1958; McArthur et al. 1958).

Urban—rural differences. In all studies examining urban—rural differences, rural farm populations, including both sexes and all ages, were found to contain a smaller percentage of smokers than either the rural nonfarm or the city populations. Rural nonfarm persons closely resemble urban dwellers in their smoking habits. Women and girls in large cities in the northeastern United States (e.g., New York City and Boston) smoke more than do women and girls in cities in other areas of the United States. It is unknown whether a similar pattern prevails when cosmopolitan centers such as London, Paris, and Rome are used as a basis for comparison.

Race and religion. In the English-speaking countries which have been studied, there appears to be no relationship between race and smoking, the proportion of smokers being approximately equal between the Caucasian and Negro sub-samples.

It is well known that devout followers of some religions do not smoke at all (e.g., Hindus, Muslims, Mormons). Studies of young men and women of high school and college age in the United States (Horn et al. 1959; Salber & Worcester 1964; Straits & Sechrest 1963) have reported that significantly more followers of the Roman Catholic and Jewish faiths were found to smoke than Protestants in these age groups. In the Newton, Massachusetts, study, Salber and Worcester (1964, p. 36) found that Catholic men and boys smoked more than other males, while Jewish women and girls smoked more than other females.

Psychological variables. In addition to sociological and demographic variables, some psychological variables have also been explored.

Intelligence and achievement. Present available evidence suggests that there is no direct relationship between intelligence, as measured by tests of IQ, and smoking (Matarazzo & Saslow I960; Hochbaum 1964).

The same is not true for academic achievement during adolescence, however. The previously mentioned studies in Portland, Oregon; Buffalo, New York; Newton, Massachusetts; and a study in London, England (Davis, as reported in Kissen 1960, p. 369) indicate that those students who are academically inferior to their age mates or classmates have a significantly greater tendency to be smokers. This relationship between achievement and smoking, of course, does not establish that one of the two factors is a cause of the other. It can be stated, however, on the basis of consistent evidence, that groups of young men and women who are academically less successful than theirpeers contain a higher proportion of smokers than is found among their more successful classmates. Also, smokers are found to take the scholastically less demanding academic programs (vocational preparation in contrast to a college preparatory curriculum). Smokers date more but engage in fewer extracurricular activities, including sports of some types, than do nonsmokers. No interpretation of these disparate facts has yet achieved wide acceptance.

Personality. Studies attempting to relate personality variables to smoking suffer from the serious handicap that there exists today no highly valid, universally accepted measure either of global personality or of any specific personality dimension. (This assertion quite probably will find support among serious students of personality.) One result is that seldom do any two studies, even those allegedly measuring the same trait (e.g., neuroti-cism), utilize the same methods of assessment; therefore they cannot be compared meaningfully.

Matarazzo and Saslow (1960), Kissen (1960), Lawton (1962), Horn (1963), and Hochbaum (1964) have presented reviews of the few published studies in this area. The results, meager and poorly supported as they are, suggest the following. In most English-speaking countries roughly half of the population are smokers. Studies using stratified as well as nonstratified samples (some small, some large) reveal the presence of a slightly higher number of “extraverts” and “neurotic,” “anxious,” and “tense” individuals among the smokers as compared to the nonsmokers. However, although the differences in the mean scores of smokers and nonsmokers are statistically significant, they typically reflect a difference in response to only one or two questionnaire items. Two of the most extensive (3,194 individual subjects) and best-designed studies on this subject (Eysenck et al. I960; Eysenck 1963) utilized stratified samples of individuals in the British Isles. In the second one Eysenck (1963, pp. 114–115) concludes : “Degree and type of smoking are ... related to extraversion, in the sense that pipe smokers are introverted, as are non-smokers; light, medium and heavy smokers are extraverted, increasingly so in that order.” The degree of extraversion among ex-smokers is found to be indistinguishable from that among light smokers. Such a strong conclusion may not be justified, however, since the mean extraversion scores, on the 31–item extra-version measure used by Eysenck, were as follows for the groups studied (in the order in which they are mentioned above): 17.07, 17.63, 17.60, 18.70, 18.95, and 17.71. Although several of the groups differed significantly from each other because of the large number of subjects, the mean difference between the highest and lowest groups was only 1.88 items on the 31–item personality measure. Similar small but statistically significant differences between smokers and nonsmokers have been found on the “anxiety” scale used by Matarazzo and Saslow (1960, p. 499) and on the “tension,” “psychosomatic,” and “neuroticism” measures used by other workers.

Referring to the research described above in their 1960 review, Matarazzo and Saslow concluded

. . . while smokers do differ from non-smokers in a variety of characteristics, none of the studies has shown a single variable which is found exclusively in one group and is completely absent in the other . . . [this] is especially true for the variables measuring personality characteristics. . . . Examination of the means, standard deviations, ranges, percentages, etc. . . . makes clear that while group trends suggest the smoker to be more “neurotic,” on the average, there are still many individual smokers with neuroticism, or anxiety . . . scores lower than those of many non-smokers. . . . Thus, a clear-cut smoker’s personality has not emerged from the results so far published in the literature. ... It is hard to believe that they [the half of a country’s population who smoke] would share in common one personality “type.” This is not to imply, however, that the various psychological dimensions along which smokers have been shown, as a group, to differ from non-smokers may not suggest an important single process, or processes, underlying these various demonstrated (but small) differences. Further research may indeed so systematize the disparate findings. (1960, pp. 508–510)

Thus, a number of studies report small differences in mean scores, suggesting that compared to the nonsmoker the average smoker has a slight tendency to be more extraverted, outgoing, adventurous, tense, anxious, inclined to drink more alcohol and coffee, date earlier, watch more television, see more movies, drive an automobile earlier, read fewer books per month, play fewer sports, and belong to fewer clubs and school organizations. However, a large number of individual smokers may show few or none of these characteristics. In addition, no unifying theme, trait, or personality dimension has been abstracted from these separate characteristics. For the present it seems best to conclude that any psychological dynamics that may differentiate the smoker from the nonsmoker have not yet been isolated.

Initiation of smoking. Phanishayi (1951), in India, was one of the first to study variables associated with the initiation of smoking. His researchwas followed by that of McArthur and his associates (1958) with Harvard College undergraduates in Boston; Bothwell (1959) in Oxfordshire, England; Chave, Schilling and their associates (1959) in London; Horn and his associates (1959) in Portland, Oregon; Cartwright et al. (1959) in Edinburgh, Scotland; Morison and Medovy (1961) in Winnipeg, Canada; and Salber and MacMahon (1961) in Newton, Massachusetts.

These studies consistently have identified parental smoking as one of the most important predisposing factors in smoking among school-age children. As mentioned above, most smokers appear to have begun smoking between the ages of 10 and 18. If both parents smoke, the probability that their children will begin to smoke is several times that of children with nonsmoking parents. When only one parent smokes, the incidence of smoking among the offspring falls midway between that of the other two groups. Published data also suggest a higher frequency of smoking among children with older siblings who smoke.

The relationship of some other sociopersonal factors to initiation of the smoking habit is less clear-cut. In general, the studies suggest that youngsters’ beginning to smoke is related to: (a) curiosity about smoking; (b) conformity pressures among adolescents; (c) need for status among peers, including self-perceived failure to achieve peer-group status or satisfaction; (d) the need for self-assurance; and (e) striving for adult status (see the reviews by Hochbaum 1964; Horn 1963). However, it is difficult to measure the strength of such needs, as well as their relative influence, and therefore these relationships should be considered tentative.

There is no convincing evidence that beginning to smoke in childhood or young adulthood is a sign of rebellion against parents or other authority figures, although such a hypothesis has been suggested by several writers.

Most writers have suggested that once the smoking habit has been established the factors associated with its continuation very likely are different from those associated with its initiation. Although the evidence is far from conclusive, it appears that sit-uational tension-reduction is an important motivational factor in perpetuating the smoking habit. Also, a small group of smokers attest that they continue to smoke because it is pleasurable.

Many smokers report considerable dissatisfaction with smoking but, despite repeated attempts, have found themselves unable to break the habit. In fact, Horn (1963, p. 364), who sampled the adult population of the entire United States, reports that only 14 per cent of regular cigarette smokers state that they consider the habit pleasurable, safe, and worth the cost.

Discontinuation of smoking. Why do smokers not give up the habit that so many state they would like to shed? Despite pronouncements from health authorities in all parts of the world, the proportion of smokers reporting successful discontinuation of smoking is from 10 to 20 per cent in males and 3 to 10 per cent in females (Haenszel et al. 1956, p. 24; Hammond & Percy 1958, p. 2,956; Cart-wright et al. 1959, p. 726; and Horn 1963, p. 391).

Immediately following the 1964 report of the surgeon general of the United States, 8.6 per cent of the smoking students at two U.S. colleges reported that they stopped smoking as a result of the health hazard identified in this report (Katahn et al. 1964). Again, a greater percentage of male smokers (10.3 per cent) than female smokers (5.9 per cent) reported quitting. In addition, more natural science majors (18.2 per cent) quit smoking than did liberal arts majors (6.7 per cent). The same students took a story-completion test requiring them to create both an imaginary story and an estimate of the amount of time which in reality would have transpired during the occurrence of the sequence of events in the story. Ex-smokers tended to respond with a longer time perspective than did students who continued to smoke, and the authors suggest that these individuals might be more likely to worry about long-term health hazards.

Immediately before and following the surgeon general’s report, several researchers attempted to find effective means for discouraging initiation and encouraging cessation of– the smoking habit. Horn (1960) used a variety of educational approaches with high school students in Portland, Oregon, but he reported only minimal success in preventing the initiation of smoking. Both Horn (1964, personal communication) and Lawton (1964, personal communication) have attempted to help adult smokers discontinue smoking through the use of weekly educational meetings (Horn in Washington) and weekly “group therapy” sessions (Lawton in Philadelphia). With both techniques, success rates were not much higher than the 10 to 20 per cent “spontaneous” successes reported by other writers. The Horn and Lawton studies raise an important question for all cessation studies: who is an ex-smoker? Is he an individual who quits for a week, a month, a year, or forever? It is both a common observation and an established statistical fact thatmany ex-smokers resume the habit after varyinglengths of time.

Comment. After reviewing the above literature, the present authors have concluded that, in all probability, people begin to smoke for essentially the same reasons that they adopt other habits, such as eating certain foods, using certain brands of soap, wearing lipstick, going to see the Beatles, and so forth. That is, initiation of smoking appears to be a result of the millions of dollars spent yearly by (cigarette) manufacturers to influence people to do so; the standards and fads extant in youthful and adult social circles; the examples provided by parents and families; the depth of commitment to personal religious codes; and, finally, some psychological and personality characteristics (e.g., extra-version, tension, neuroticism, etc.) of the individual himself. In our opinion, the last category (personality characteristics) is the least influential in determining whether a given individual will begin to smoke, whereas the other factors (especially the amount spent on world-wide advertising) have considerable influence. Once started, however, continuation or discontinuation appears to be, in large part, a function of the sociopsychological characteristics of the individual.

Hammond, E. Cuyler; and Percy, Constance 1958 Ex-smokers. New York State Journal of Medicine 58:2956–2959.

Heath, Clark W. 1958 Differences Between Smokers and Non-smokers. AMA Archives of Internal Medicine 101:377–388. [Hochbaum, G. M.] 1964 Psycho-Social Aspects of Smoking. Pages 359–379 in U.S. Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health, Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. Public Health Service Publication No. 1103. Washington: Government Printing Office.

Horn, Daniel 1960 Modifying Smoking Habits in High School Students. Children 7:63–65.

Lihenfeld, Abraham M. 1959 Emotional and Other Selected Characteristics of Cigarette Smokers and Non-smokers as Related to Epidemiological Studies of Lung Cancer and Other Diseases. Journal of the National Cancer Institute 22:259–282.

Mcarthur, Charles; Waldran, Ellen; and Dickinson, John 1958 The Psychology of Smoking. Journal of Abnormal and Social Psychology 56:267–275.

Phanishayi, R. A. 1951 Causes of Smoking Habit in College Students: An Investigation. Journal of Education and Psychology 9:29–37.

Sackrin, Seymour M.; and Conover, Arthur G. 1957 Tobacco Smoking in the United States in Relation to Income. U.S. Department of Agriculture, Market Research Report, No. 189. Washington: The Department.

Salber, Eva J.; and Macmahon, Brian 1961 Cigarette Smoking Among High School Students Related to Social Class and Parental Smoking Habits. American Journal of Public Health 51:1780–1789.

Salber, Eva J.; Macmahon, Brian; and Welsh, Barbara

1962 Smoking Habits of High School Students Re– lated to Intelligence and Achievement. Pediatrics 29:780–787.

Stbaits, Bruce C.; and SECHHEST, LEE 1963 Further Support of Some Findings About the Characteristics of Smokers and Non-smokers. Journal of Consulting Psychology 27:282.

U. S. Surgeon General’s Advisory Committee on Smoking and Health 1964 Smoking and Health: Report of the Advisory Committee to the Surgeon General of the Public Health Service. Public Health Service Publication No. 1103. Washington: Government Printing Office.

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Smoking

Gale Encyclopedia of Medicine, 3rd ed.
COPYRIGHT 2006 Thomson Gale

Smoking

Definition

Smoking is the inhalation of the smoke of burning tobacco encased in cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. Casual smoking is the act of smoking only occasionally, usually in a social situation or to relieve stress. A smoking habit is a physical addiction to tobacco products. Many health experts now regard habitual smoking as a psychological addiction, too, and one with serious health consequences.

Description

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has asserted that cigarettes and smokeless tobacco should be considered nicotine delivery devices. Nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco, is inhaled into the lungs, where most of it stays. The rest passes into the bloodstream, reaching the brain in about 10 seconds and dispersing throughout the body in about 20 seconds.

Depending on the circumstances and the amount consumed, nicotine can act as either a stimulant or tranquilizer. This can explain why some people report that smoking gives them energy and stimulates their mental activity, while others note that smoking relieves anxiety and relaxes them. The initial "kick" results in part from the drug's stimulation of the adrenal glands and resulting release of epinephrine into the blood. Epinephrine causes several physiological changes—it temporarily narrows the arteries, raises the blood pressure, raises the levels of fat in the blood, and increases the heart rate and flow of blood from the heart. Some researchers think epinephrine contributes to smokers' increased risk of high blood pressure.

Nicotine, by itself, increases the risk of heart disease. However, when a person smokes, he or she is ingesting a lot more than nicotine. Smoke from a cigarette, pipe, or cigar is made up of many additional toxic chemicals, including tar and carbon monoxide. Tar is a sticky substance that forms into deposits in the lungs, causing lung cancer and respiratory distress. Carbon monoxide limits the amount of oxygen that the red blood cells can convey throughout your body. Also, it may damage the inner walls of the arteries, which allows fat to build up in them.

Besides tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide, tobacco smoke contains 4,000 different chemicals. More than 200 of these chemicals are known be toxic. Nonsmokers who are exposed to tobacco smoke also take in these toxic chemicals. They inhale the smoke exhaled by the smoker as well as the more toxic sidestream smoke—the smoke from the end of the burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe.

Here's why sidestream smoke is more toxic than exhaled smoke: When a person smokes, the smoke he or she inhales and then breathes out leaves harmful deposits inside the body. But because lungs partially cleanse the smoke, exhaled smoke contains fewer poisonous chemicals. That's why exposure to tobacco smoke is dangerous even for a nonsmoker.

Causes and symptoms

No one starts smoking to become addicted to nicotine. It isn't known how much nicotine may be consumed before the body becomes addicted. However, once smoking becomes a habit, the smoker faces a lifetime of health risks associated with one of the strongest addictions known to man.

About 70% of smokers in the United States would like to quit; in any given year, however, only about 3.6% of the country's 47 million smokers quit successfully.

Although specific genes have not yet been identified as of 2003, researchers think that genetic factors contribute substantially to developing a smoking habit. Several twin studies have led to estimates of 46-84% heritability for smoking. It is thought that some genetic variations affect the speed of nicotine metabolism in the body and the activity level of nicotinic receptors in the brain.

Symptoms That Occur After Quitting Smoking

Symptom

Cause

Duration

Relief

Craving for cigarette

nicotine craving

first week can linger for months

distract yourself with other activity

Irritability, impatience

nicotine craving

2 to 4 weeks

Exercise, relaxation techniques, avoid caffeine

Insomnia

nicotine craving temporarily reduces deep sleep

2 to 4 weeks

Avoid caffeine after 6 PM relaxation techniques; exercise

Fatigue

lack of nicotine stimulation

2 to 4 weeks

Nap

Lack of concentration

lack of nicotine stimulation

A few weeks

Reduce workload; avoid stress

Hunger

cigarettes craving confused hunger pangs

Up to several weeks

Drink water or low calorie drinks; eat low-calorie snacks

Coughing, dry throat, nasal drip

Body ridding itself of mucus in lungs and airways

Several weeks

Drink plenty of fluids; use cough drops

Constipation, gas

Intestinal movement decreases with lack of nicotine

1 to 2 weeks

Drink plenty of fluids; add fiber to diet; exercise

Smoking risks

Smoking is recognized as the leading preventable cause of death, causing or contributing to the deaths of approximately 430,700 Americans each year. Anyone with a smoking habit has an increased chance of lung, cervical, and other types of cancer; respiratory diseases such as emphysema, asthma, and chronic bronchitis ; and cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, and atherosclerosis (narrowing and hardening of the arteries). The risk of stroke is especially high in women who take birth control pills.

Smoking can damage fertility, making it harder to conceive, and it can interfere with the growth of the fetus during pregnancy. It accounts for an estimated 14% of premature births and 10% of infant deaths. There is some evidence that smoking may cause impotence in some men.

Because smoking affects so many of the body's systems, smokers often have vitamin deficiencies and suffer oxidative damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are molecules that steal electrons from other molecules, turning the other molecules into free radicals and destabilizing the molecules in the body's cells.

Smoking is recognized as one of several factors that might be related to a higher risk of hip fractures in older adults.

Studies reveal that the more a person smokes, the more likely he is to sustain illnesses such as cancer, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. But even smokers who indulge in the habit only occasionally are more prone to these diseases.

Some brands of cigarettes are advertised as "low tar," but no cigarette is truly safe. If a smoker switches to a low-tar cigarette, he is likely to inhale longer and more deeply to get the chemicals his body craves. A smoker has to quit the habit entirely in order to improve his health and decrease the chance of disease.

Though some people believe chewing tobacco is safer, it also carries health risks. People who chew tobacco have an increased risk of heart disease and mouth and throat cancer. Pipe and cigar smokers have increased health risks as well, even though these smokers generally do not inhale as deeply as cigarette smokers do. These groups haven't been studied as extensively as cigarette smokers, but there is evidence that they may be at a slightly lower risk of cardiovascular problems but a higher risk of cancer and various types of circulatory conditions.

Recent research reveals that passive smokers, or those who unavoidably breathe in second-hand tobacco smoke, have an increased chance of many health problems such as lung cancer and asthma, and in children, sudden infant death syndrome.

Smokers' symptoms

Smokers are likely to exhibit a variety of symptoms that reveal the damage caused by smoking. A nagging morning cough may be one sign of a tobacco habit. Other symptoms include shortness of breath, wheezing, and frequent occurrences of respiratory illness, such as bronchitis. Smoking also increases fatigue and decreases the smoker's sense of smell and taste. Smokers are more likely to develop poor circulation, with cold hands and feet and premature wrinkles.

Sometimes the illnesses that result from smoking come on silently with little warning. For instance, coronary artery disease may exhibit few or no symptoms. At other times, there will be warning signs, such as bloody discharge from a woman's vagina, a sign of cancer of the cervix. Another warning sign is a hacking cough, worse than the usual smoker's cough, that brings up phlegm or blood—a sign of lung cancer.

Withdrawal symptoms

A smoker who tries to quit may expect one or more of these withdrawal symptoms: nausea, constipation or diarrhea, drowsiness, loss of concentration, insomnia, headache, nausea, and irritability.

Diagnosis

It's not easy to quit smoking. That's why it may be wise for a smoker to turn to his physician for help. For the greatest success in quitting and to help with the withdrawal symptoms, the smoker should talk over a treatment plan with his doctor or alternative practitioner. He should have a general physical examination to gauge his general health and uncover any deficiencies. He should also have a thorough evaluation for some of the serious diseases that smoking can cause.

Treatment

Research shows that most smokers who want to quit benefit from the support of other people. It helps to quit with a friend or to join a group such as those organized by the American Cancer Society. These groups provide support and teach behavior modification methods that can help the smoker quit. The smoker's physician can often refer him to such groups.

Other alternatives to help with the withdrawal symptoms of kicking the habit include nicotine replacement therapy in the form of gum, patches, nasal sprays, and oral inhalers. These are available by prescription or over the counter. A physician can provide advice on how to use them. They slowly release a small amount of nicotine into the bloodstream, satisfying the smoker's physical craving. Over time, the amount of gum the smoker chews is decreased and the amount of time between applying the patches is increased. This helps wean the smoker from nicotine slowly, eventually beating his addiction to the drug. But there's one important caution: If the smoker lights up while taking a nicotine replacement, a nicotine overdose may cause serious health problems.

The prescription drug Zyban (bupropion hydrochloride) has shown some success in helping smokers quit. This drug contains no nicotine, and was originally developed as an antidepressant. It isn't known exactly how bupropion works to suppress the desire for nicotine. A five-year study of bupropion reported in 2003 that the drug has a very good record for safety and effectiveness in treating tobacco dependence. Its most common side effect is insomnia, which can also result from nicotine withdrawal.

Researchers are investigating two new types of drugs as possible treatments for tobacco dependence as of 2003. The first is an alkaloid known as 18-methoxycoronaridine (18-MC), which selectively blocks the nicotinic receptors in brain tissue. Another approach involves developing drugs that inhibit the activity of cytochrome P450 2A6 (CYP2A6), which controls the metabolism of nicotine.

Expected results

Research on smoking shows that most smokers desire to quit. But smoking is so addictive that fewer than 20% of the people who try ever successfully kick the habit. Still, many people attempt to quit smoking over and over again, despite the difficulties—the cravings and withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability and restlessness.

For those who do quit, the benefits to health are well worth the effort. The good news is that once a smoker quits the health effects are immediate and dramatic. After the first day, oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in the blood return to normal. At two days, nerve endings begin to grow back and the senses of taste and smell revive. Within two weeks to three months, circulation and breathing improve. After one year of not smoking, the risk of heart disease is reduced by 50%. After 15 years of abstinence, the risks of health problems from smoking virtually vanish. A smoker who quits for good often feels a lot better too, with less fatigue and fewer respiratory illnesses.

Alternative treatment

There are a wide range of alternative treatments that can help a smoker quit the habit, including hypnotherapy, herbs, acupuncture, and meditation. For example, a controlled trial demonstrated that self-massage can help smokers crave less intensely, smoke fewer cigarettes, and in some cases completely give them up.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy helps the smoker achieve a trance-like state, during which the deepest levels of the mind are accessed. A session with a hypnotherapist may begin with a discussion of whether the smoker really wants to and truly has the motivation to stop smoking. The therapist will explain how hypnosis can reduce the stress-related symptoms that sometimes come with kicking the habit.

Often the therapist will discuss the dangers of smoking with the patient and begin to "reframe" the patient's thinking about smoking. Many smokers are convinced they can't quit, and the therapist can help persuade them that they can change this behavior. These suggestions are then repeated while the smoker is under hypnosis. The therapist may also suggest while the smoker is under hypnosis that his feelings of worry, anxiety, and irritability will decrease.

In a review of 17 studies of the effectiveness of hypnotherapy, the percentage of people treated by hypnosis who still were not smoking after six months ranged from 4-8%. In programs that included several hours of treatment, intense interpersonal interaction, individualized suggestions, and follow-up treatment, success rates were above 50%.

Aromatherapy

One study demonstrated that inhaling the vapor from black pepper extract can reduce symptoms associated with smoking withdrawal. Other essential oils can be used for relieving the anxiety a smoker often experiences while quitting.

Herbs

A variety of herbs can help smokers reduce their cravings for nicotine, calm their irritability, and even reverse the oxidative cellular damage done by smoking. Lobelia, sometimes called Indian tobacco, has historically been used as a substitute for tobacco. It contains a substance called lobeline, which decreases the craving for nicotine by bolstering the nervous system and calming the smoker. In high doses, lobelia can cause vomiting, but the average dose—about 10 drops per day—should pose no problems.

Herbs that can help relax a smoker during withdrawal include wild oats and kava kava.

To reduce the oral fixation supplied by a nicotine habit, a smoker can chew on licorice root—the plant, not the candy. Licorice is good for the liver, which is a major player in the body's detoxification process. Licorice also acts as a tonic for the adrenal system, which helps reduce stress. And there's an added benefit: If a smoker tries to light up after chewing on licorice root, the cigarette tastes like burned cardboard.

Other botanicals that can help repair free-radical damage to the lungs and cardiovascular system are those high in flavonoids, such as hawthorn, gingko biloba, and bilberry, as well as antioxidants such as vitamin A, vitamin C, zinc, and selenium.

Acupuncture

This ancient Chinese method of healing is used commonly to help beat addictions, including smoking. The acupuncturist will use hair-thin needles to stimulate the body's qi, or healthy energy. Acupuncture is a sophisticated treatment system based on revitalizing qi, which supposedly flows through the body in defined pathways called meridians. During an addiction like smoking, qi isn't flowing smoothly or gets stuck, the theory goes.

Points in the ear and feet are stimulated to help the smoker overcome his addiction. Often the acupuncturist will recommend keeping the needles in for five to seven days to calm the smoker and keep him balanced.

Vitamins

Smoking seriously depletes vitamin C in the body and leaves it more susceptible to infections. Vitamin C can prevent or reduce free-radical damage by acting as an antioxidant in the lungs. Smokers need additional C, in higher dosage than nonsmokers. Fish in the diet supplies Omega-3 fatty acids, which are associated with a reduced risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema or chronic bronchitis) in smokers. Omega-3 fats also provide cardiovascular benefits as well as an anti-depressive effect. Vitamin therapy doesn't reduce craving but it can help beat some of the damage created by smoking. Vitamin B12 and folic acid may help protect against smoking-induced cancer.

Prevention

How do you give up your cigarettes for good and never go back to them again?

KEY TERMS

Antioxidant— Any substance that reduces the damage caused by oxidation, such as the harm caused by free radicals.

Chronic bronchitis— A smoking-related respiratory illness in which the membranes that line the bronchi, or the lung's air passages, narrow over time. Symptoms include a morning cough that brings up phlegm, breathlessness, and wheezing.

Cytochrome— A substance that contains iron and acts as a hydrogen carrier for the eventual release of energy in aerobic respiration.

Emphysema— An incurable, smoking-related disease, in which the air sacs at the end of the lung's bronchi become weak and inefficient. People with emphysema often first notice shortness of breath, repeated wheezing and coughing that brings up phlegm.

Epinephrine— A nervous system hormone stimulated by the nicotine in tobacco. It increases heart rate and may raise smokers' blood pressure.

Flavonoid— A food chemical that helps to limit oxidative damage to the body's cells, and protects against heart disease and cancer.

Nicotine— The addictive ingredient of tobacco, it acts on the nervous system and is both stimulating and calming.

Nicotine replacement therapy— A method of weaning a smoker away from both nicotine and the oral fixation that accompanies a smoking habit by giving the smoker smaller and smaller doses of nicotine in the form of a patch or gum.

Sidestream smoke— The smoke that is emitted from the burning end of a cigarette or cigar, or that comes from the end of a pipe. Along with exhaled smoke, it is a constituent of second-hand smoke.

Here are a few tips from the experts:

Have a plan and set a definite quit date.

Get rid of all the cigarettes and ashtrays at home or in your desk at work.

Don't allow others to smoke in your house.

Tell your friends and neighbors that you're quitting. Doing so helps make quitting a matter of pride.

Chew sugarless gum or eat sugar-free hard candy to redirect the oral fixation that comes with smoking. This will prevent weight gain, too.

Eat as much as you want, but only low-calorie foods and drinks. Drink plenty of water. This may help with the feelings of tension and restlessness that quitting can bring. After eight weeks, you'll lose your craving for tobacco, so it's safe then to return to your usual eating habits.

Stay away from social situations that prompt you to smoke. Dine in the nonsmoking section of restaurants.

Spend the money you save not smoking on an occasional treat for yourself.

Ferry, L., and J. A. Johnston. "Efficacy and Safety of Bupropion SR for Smoking Cessation: Data from Clinical Trials and Five Years of Postmarketing Experience." International Journal of Clinical Practice 57 (April 2003): 224-230.

Citation styles

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The Chicago Manual of Style

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Notes:

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In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

Smoking

Smoking

Definition

Smoking is the inhalation of the smoke of burning tobacco encased in cigarettes, pipes, and cigars. Casual smoking is the act of smoking only occasionally, usually in a social situation or to relieve stress . A smoking habit is a physical addiction to tobacco products. Many health experts now regard habitual smoking as a psychological addiction, too, and one with serious health consequences.

Description

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) has asserted that cigarettes and smokeless tobacco should be considered nicotine delivery devices. Nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco, is inhaled into the lungs, where most of it stays. The rest passes into the bloodstream, reaching the brain in about ten seconds and dispersing throughout the body in about 20 seconds.

Depending on the circumstances and the amount consumed, nicotine can act as either a stimulant or tranquilizer. This can explain why some people report that smoking gives them energy and stimulates their mental activity, while others note that smoking relieves anxiety and relaxes them. The initial "kick" results in part from the drug's stimulation of the adrenal glands and resulting release of epinephrine into the blood. Epinephrine causes several physiological changes—it temporarily narrows the arteries, raises the blood pressure, raises the levels of fat in the blood, and increases the heart rate and flow of blood from the heart. Some researchers think epinephrine contributes to smokers' increased risk of high blood pressure.

THERAPIES FOR TREATING SYMPTOMS OF SMOKING CESSATION

Treatment

Description

Symptom treated

Lobelia

Used as a nicotine substitute, it can bolster the nervous system

Withdrawal and craving

Wild oats or kava kava

Relaxant

Withdrawal

Licorice

Can be chewed to help withdrawal

Oral fixation

Hawthorn, gingko biloba, and bilberry

All contain bioflavonoids that can help repair free radical damage

Damage to lungs and cardiovascular system

Acupuncture

Stimulation of points in ears and feet helps cessation

Addiction and withdrawal

Vitamin C

Antioxidant that helps fight infection

Boosts immune system

Vitamin B12

Helps protect body from disease

Smoking-induced cancers

Omega-3 fatty acids

Helps protect body from disease

Smoking-related illness, such as emphysema, and depression

Nicotine by itself increases the risk of heart disease . However, when a person smokes, he or she is ingesting a lot more than nicotine. Smoke from a cigarette, pipe, or cigar is made up of many additional toxic chemicals, including tar and carbon monoxide. Tar is a sticky substance that forms into deposits in the lungs, causing lung cancer and respiratory distress. Carbon monoxide limits the amount of oxygen that the red blood cells can convey throughout the body. Also, it may damage the inner walls of the arteries, which allows fat to build up in them.

Besides tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide, tobacco smoke contains 4,000 different chemicals. More than 200 of these chemicals are known be toxic. Nonsmokers who are exposed to tobacco smoke also take in these toxic chemicals. They inhale the smoke exhaled by the smoker as well as the more toxic sidestream smoke—the smoke from the end of the burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe.

Here's why sidestream smoke is more toxic than exhaled smoke: When a person smokes, the smoke he or she inhales and then breathes out leaves harmful deposits inside the body. But because lungs partially cleanse the smoke, exhaled smoke contains fewer poisonous chemicals. That's why exposure to tobacco smoke is dangerous even for a nonsmoker.

Causes & symptoms

No one starts smoking to become addicted to nicotine. It isn't known how much nicotine may be consumed before the body becomes addicted. However, once smoking becomes a habit, the smoker faces a lifetime of health risks associated with an addiction that has been shown to be stronger than alcohol addiction and at least as strong as narcotics addiction.

About 70% of smokers in the United States would like to quit; in any given year, however, only about 3.6% of the country's 47 million smokers quit successfully.

Although specific genes have not yet been identified as of 2003, researchers think that genetic factors contribute substantially to developing a smoking habit. Several twin studies have led to estimates of 46–84% heritability for smoking. It is thought that some genetic variations affect the speed of nicotine metabolism in the body and the activity level of nicotinic receptors in the brain.

Smoking risks

Smoking is recognized as the leading preventable cause of death, causing or contributing to the deaths of approximately 430,700 Americans each year. Anyone with a smoking habit has an increased chance of lung, cervical, and other types of cancer; respiratory diseases such as emphysema, asthma , and chronic bronchitis ; and cardiovascular disease, such as heart attack , high blood pressure, stroke , and atherosclerosis (narrowing and hardening of the arteries). The risk of stroke is especially high in women who take birth control pills.

Smoking can damage fertility, making it harder to conceive, and it can interfere with the growth of the fetus during pregnancy . It accounts for an estimated 14% of premature births and 10% of infant deaths. There is some evidence that smoking may cause impotence in some men.

Because smoking affects so many of the body's systems, smokers often have vitamin deficiencies and suffer oxidative damage caused by free radicals. Free radicals are molecules that steal electrons from other molecules, turning the other molecules into free radicals and destabilizing the molecules in the body's cells.

Smoking is recognized as one of several factors that might be related to a higher risk of hip fractures in older adults.

Studies reveal that the more a person smokes, the more likely he is to sustain illnesses such as cancer, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. But even smokers who indulge in the habit only occasionally are more prone to these diseases.

Some brands of cigarettes are advertised as "low tar," but no cigarette is truly safe. If a smoker switches to a low-tar cigarette, he is likely to inhale longer and more deeply to get the chemicals his body craves. A smoker has to quit the habit entirely in order to improve his health and decrease the chance of disease.

Though some people believe chewing tobacco is safer, it also carries health risks. People who chew tobacco have an increased risk of heart disease and mouth and throat cancer. Pipe and cigar smokers have increased health risks as well, even though these smokers generally do not inhale as deeply as cigarette smokers do. These groups haven't been studied as extensively as cigarette smokers, but there is evidence that they may be at a slightly lower risk of cardiovascular problems but a higher risk of cancer and various types of circulatory conditions.

Recent research reveals that passive smokers, or those who unavoidably breathe in secondhand tobacco smoke, have an increased chance of many health problems such as lung cancer , ischemic heart disease, and asthma; and in children, sudden infant death syndrome. A Swedish study published in 2001 found that people who were exposed to environmental tobacco smoke (ETS) as children were both more likely to develop asthma as adults, and to become smokers themselves. In the fall of 2001 the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) partnered with the American Academy of Allergy, Asthma, and Immunology (AAAAI) to educate parents about the risks to their children of secondhand smoke, and to persuade parents to sign a Smoke Free Home Pledge. The AAAAI reported that many parents cut down on or gave up smoking when they recognized the damage that smoking was causing to their children's lungs. A study of secondhand smoke in the workplace done by the European Union found that it can affect workers as severely as smoke in the home can affect children. The study noted that workers exposed to secondhand smoke from their colleagues had significantly higher rates of asthma and upper respiratory infections than those who were employed in smoke-free workplaces.

Smokers' symptoms

Smokers are likely to exhibit a variety of symptoms that reveal the damage caused by smoking. A nagging morning cough may be one sign of a tobacco habit. Other symptoms include shortness of breath, wheezing , and frequent occurrences of respiratory illness, such as bronchitis. Smoking also increases fatigue and decreases the smoker's sense of smell and taste. Smokers are more likely to develop poor circulation, with cold hands and feet and premature wrinkles.

Sometimes the illnesses that result from smoking come on silently with little warning. For instance, coronary artery disease may exhibit few or no symptoms. At other times, there will be warning signs, such as bloody discharge from a woman's vagina, a sign of cancer of the cervix. Another warning sign is a hacking cough, worse than the usual smoker's cough, that brings up phlegm or blood—a sign of lung cancer.

Withdrawal symptoms

A smoker who tries to quit may expect one or more of these withdrawal symptoms: nausea, constipation or diarrhea , drowsiness, loss of concentration, insomnia, headache , nausea, and irritability.

Diagnosis

It's not easy to quit smoking. That's why it may be wise for a smoker to turn to his physician for help. For the greatest success in quitting and to help with the withdrawal symptoms, the smoker should talk over a treatment plan with his doctor or alternative practitioner. He should have a general physical examination to gauge his general health and uncover any deficiencies. He should also have a thorough evaluation for some of the serious diseases that smoking can cause.

Treatment

There are a wide range of alternative treatments that can help a smoker quit the habit, including hypnotherapy , herbs, acupuncture, and meditation . For example, a controlled trial demonstrated that self-massage can help smokers crave less intensely, smoke fewer cigarettes, and in some cases give them up completely.

Hypnotherapy

Hypnotherapy helps the smoker achieve a trance-like state, during which the deepest levels of the mind are accessed. A session with a hypnotherapist may begin with a discussion of whether the smoker really wants to and truly has the motivation to stop smoking. The therapist will explain how hypnosis can reduce the stress-related symptoms that sometimes come with kicking the habit.

Often the therapist will discuss the dangers of smoking with the patient and begin to "reframe" the patient's thinking about smoking. Many smokers are convinced they can't quit, and the therapist can help persuade them that they can change this behavior. These suggestions are then repeated while the smoker is under hypnosis. The therapist may also suggest while the smoker is under hypnosis that his feelings of worry, anxiety, and irritability will decrease.

In a review of 17 studies of the effectiveness of hypnotherapy, the percentage of people treated by hypnosis who still were not smoking after six months ranged from 4% to 8%. In programs that included several hours of treatment, intense interpersonal interaction, individualized suggestions, and follow-up treatment, success rates were above 50%.

Aromatherapy

One study demonstrated that inhaling the vapor from black pepper extract can reduce symptoms associated with smoking withdrawal. Other essential oils can be used for relieving the anxiety a smoker often experiences while quitting.

Herbs

A variety of herbs can help smokers reduce their cravings for nicotine, calm their irritability, and even reverse the oxidative cellular damage done by smoking. Lobelia, sometimes called Indian tobacco, has historically been used as a substitute for tobacco. It contains a substance called lobeline, which decreases the craving for nicotine by bolstering the nervous system and calming the smoker. In high doses, lobelia can cause vomiting , but the average dose—about 10 drops per day—should pose no problems.

Herbs that can help relax a smoker during withdrawal include wild oats and kava kava .

To reduce the oral fixation supplied by a nicotine habit, a smoker can chew on licorice root—the plant, not the candy. Licorice is good for the liver, which is a major player in the body's detoxification process. Licorice also acts as a tonic for the adrenal system, which helps reduce stress. And there's an added benefit: If a smoker tries to light up after chewing on licorice root, the cigarette tastes like burned cardboard.

Other botanicals that can help repair free-radical damage to the lungs and cardiovascular system are those high in flavonoids, such as hawthorn, gingko biloba, and bilberry , as well as antioxidants such as vitamin A, vitamin C, zinc , and selenium .

Acupuncture

This ancient Chinese method of healing is used commonly to help beat addictions, including smoking. The acupuncturist will use hair-thin needles to stimulate the body's qi, or healthy energy. Acupuncture is a sophisticated treatment system based on revitalizing qi, which supposedly flows through the body in defined pathways called meridians. During an addiction like smoking, qi isn't flowing smoothly or gets stuck, the theory goes.

Points in the ear and feet are stimulated to help the smoker overcome his addiction. Often the acupuncturist will recommend keeping the needles in for five to seven days to calm the smoker and keep him balanced.

Vitamins

Smoking seriously depletes vitamin C in the body and leaves it more susceptible to infections. Vitamin C can prevent or reduce free-radical damage by acting as an antioxidant in the lungs. Smokers need additional C, in higher dosage than nonsmokers. Fish in the diet supplies Omega-3 fatty acids , which are associated with a reduced risk of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (emphysema or chronic bronchitis) in smokers. Omega-3 fats also provide cardiovascular benefits as well as an anti-depressive effect. Vitamin therapy doesn't reduce craving but it can help beat some of the damage created by smoking. Vitamin B12 and folic acid may help protect against smoking-induced cancer.

Allopathic treatment

Research shows that most smokers who want to quit benefit from the support of other people. It helps to quit with a friend or to join a group such as those organized by the American Cancer Society. These groups provide support and teach behavior modification methods that can help the smoker quit. The smoker's physician can often refer him to such groups.

Other alternatives to help with the withdrawal symptoms of kicking the habit include nicotine replacement therapy (NRT) in the form of gum, patches, nasal sprays, and oral inhalers. These are available by prescription or over the counter. A physician can provide advice on how to use them. They slowly release a small amount of nicotine into the bloodstream, satisfying the smoker's physical craving. Over time, the amount of gum the smoker chews is decreased and the amount of time between applying the patches is increased. This tapering helps wean the smoker from nicotine slowly, eventually beating his addiction to the drug. But there's one important caution: If the smoker lights up while taking a nicotine replacement, a nicotine overdose may cause serious health problems.

The prescription drug Zyban (bupropion hydrochloride) has shown some success in helping smokers quit. This drug contains no nicotine, and was originally developed as an antidepressant. It isn't known exactly how bupropion works to suppress the desire for nicotine. A five-year study of bupropion reported in 2003 that the drug has a very good record for safety and effectiveness in treating tobacco dependence. Its most common side effect is insomnia, which can also result from nicotine withdrawal.

Researchers are investigating two new types of drugs as possible treatments for tobacco dependence as of 2003. The first is an alkaloid known as 18-methoxy-coronaridine (18-MC), which selectively blocks the nicotinic receptors in brain tissue. Another approach involves developing drugs that inhibit the activity of cytochrome P450 2A6 (CYP2A6), which controls the metabolism of nicotine.

Expected results

Research on smoking shows that most smokers desire to quit. But smoking is so addictive that fewer than 20% of the people who try ever successfully kick the habit. Still, many people attempt to quit smoking over and over again, despite the difficulties—the cravings and withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability and restlessness.

For those who do quit, the rewards of better health are well worth the effort. The good news is that once a smoker quits the health effects are immediate and dramatic. After the first day, oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in the blood return to normal. At two days, nerve endings begin to grow back and the senses of taste and smell revive. Within two weeks to three months, circulation and breathing improve. After one year of not smoking, the risk of heart disease is reduced by 50%. After 15 years of abstinence, the risks of health problems from smoking virtually vanish. A smoker who quits for good often feels a lot better too, with less fatigue and fewer respiratory illnesses.

Prevention

How do you give up your cigarettes for good and never go back to them again?

Here are a few tips from the experts:

Have a plan and set a definite quit date.

Get rid of all the cigarettes and ashtrays at home or in your desk at work.

Don't allow others to smoke in your house.

Tell your friends and neighbors that you're quitting. Doing so helps make quitting a matter of pride.

Chew sugarless gum or eat sugar-free hard candy to redirect the oral fixation that comes with smoking. This will prevent weight gain, too.

Eat as much as you want, but only low-calorie foods and drinks. Drink plenty of water. This may help with the feelings of tension and restlessness that quitting can bring. After eight weeks, you'll lose your craving for tobacco, so it's safe then to return to your usual eating habits.

Stay away from social situations that prompt you to smoke. Dine in the nonsmoking section of restaurants.

Spend the money you save by not smoking on an occasional treat for yourself.

Resources

BOOKS

"Acupuncture." In The American Medical Association Encyclopedia of Medicine, edited by Charles B. Clayman. New York: Random House, 1989.

Ferry, L., and J. A. Johnston. "Efficacy and Safety of Bupropion SR for Smoking Cessation: Data from Clinical Trials and Five Years of Postmarketing Experience." International Journal of Clinical Practice 57 (April 2003): 224–230.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

Smoking

Smoking

Definition

Smoking is the inhalation of the smoke of burning tobacco that is used mostly in three forms: cigarettes, pipes, and cigars.

Description

Casual smoking is the act of smoking only occasionally, usually in a social situation or to relieve stress. A smoking habit is a physical addiction to tobacco products. Many health experts as of 2004 regarded habitual smoking as a psychological addiction, one with serious health consequences. Nicotine, the active ingredient in tobacco, is inhaled into the lungs, where most of it stays. The rest passes into the bloodstream, reaching the brain in about 10 seconds and dispersing throughout the body in about 20 seconds.

Depending on the circumstances and the amount consumed, nicotine can act as either a stimulant or tranquilizer. This dual role explains why some people report that smoking gives them energy and stimulates their mental activity, while others note that smoking relieves anxiety and relaxes them. The initial effect results in part from the drug's stimulation of the adrenal glands and resulting release of epinephrine into the blood. Epinephrine causes several physiological changes: it temporarily narrows the arteries, raises the blood pressure, raises the levels of fat in the blood, and increases the heart rate and flow of blood from the heart. Some researchers think epinephrine contributes to smokers' increased risk of high blood pressure.

Nicotine, by itself, increases the risk of heart disease. However, when a person smokes, he or she is ingesting a lot more than nicotine. Smoke from a cigarette, pipe, or cigar is made up of many additional toxic chemicals, including tar and carbon monoxide. Tar is a
sticky substance that forms as deposits in the lungs, causing lung cancer and respiratory distress. Carbon monoxide limits the amount of oxygen that the red blood cells can convey throughout the body. Nicotine may also damage the inner walls of the arteries, which allows fat to build up in them.

Besides tar, nicotine, and carbon monoxide, tobacco smoke contains 4,000 different chemicals. More than 200 of these chemicals are known to be toxic. Nonsmokers who are exposed to tobacco smoke also take in these toxic chemicals. They inhale the smoke exhaled by the smoker as well as the more toxic sidestream smoke—the smoke from the end of the burning cigarette, cigar, or pipe.

The harmful effects of teenage smoking are both short-term and long-term. During adolescence , smoking interferes with ongoing lung growth and development, preventing the attainment of full lung function. Teenagers who smoke are less fit than their nonsmoking peers and more apt to experience shortness of breath, dizziness , coughing, and excess phlegm in their lungs. They are also more vulnerable to colds, flu, pneumonia , and other respiratory problems. Smoking for even a short time can produce a chronic smoker's cough . In addition to respiratory problems and a diminished level of overall well-being in adolescence, teenage smoking is also responsible for health problems in adulthood.

It is estimated that one third of the teenagers who start smoking each year eventually die of diseases related to tobacco use, diseases that will shorten their lives by an average of 12–15 years. Cigarette smoking is a major risk factor for cardiovascular disease, including coronary heart disease, atherosclerosis (hardening of the arteries), and stroke . Reports by the surgeon general link teenage smoking to cardiovascular disease in both adolescents and adults. The same reports cite evidence that the length of time a person has smoked has a greater impact on the risk of developing lung cancer and other smoking-related cancers than the number of cigarettes smoked; in other words, starting to smoke at an early age is an even greater health risk than being a heavy smoker.

Demographics

The National Survey on Drug Use and Health (NSDUH) is conducted annually by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services. The study found that an estimated 70.8 million Americans reported current (past month) use of a tobacco product in 2003. This is 29.8 percent of the population aged 12 or older, similar to the rate in 2002 (30.4%). Young adults aged 18–25 reported the highest rate of past month cigarette use (40.2%), similar to the rate among young adults in 2002. An estimated 35.7 million Americans aged twelve or older in 2003 were classified as nicotine dependent in the past month because of their cigarette use (15% of the total population), about the same as for 2002.

Young adults aged 18 to 25 had the highest rate of current use of cigarettes (40.2%), similar to the rate in 2002. Past month cigarette use rates among youths in 2002 and 2003 were 13 percent and 12.2 percent, respectively, not a statistically significant change. However, there were significant declines in past year (from 20.3% to 19%) and lifetime (from 33.3% to 31%) cigarette use among youths aged 12 to 17 between 2002 and 2003. Among persons aged twelve or older, a higher proportion of males than females smoked cigarettes in the past month in 2003 (28.1% versus 23%). Among youths aged 12 to 17, however, girls (12.5%) were as likely as boys (11.9%) to smoke in the past month. There was no change in cigarette use among boys aged 12 to 17 between 2002 and 2003. However, among girls, cigarette use decreased from 13.6 percent in 2002 to 12.5 percent in 2003.

Causes and symptoms

No one starts smoking to become addicted to nicotine. It is not known how much nicotine may be consumed before the body becomes addicted. However, once smoking becomes a habit, the smoker faces a lifetime of health risks associated with one of the strongest addictions known to humans.

Smoking risks

Smoking is recognized as the leading preventable cause of death, causing or contributing to the deaths of approximately 430,700 Americans each year. Anyone with a smoking habit has an increased chance of cancer (lung, cervical, and other types); respiratory diseases (emphysema, asthma , and chronic bronchitis ); and cardiovascular disease (heart attack, high blood pressure, stroke, and atherosclerosis). The risk of stroke is especially high in women who take birth control pills.

Smoking can damage fertility, making it harder to conceive, and it can interfere with the growth of the fetus during pregnancy. It accounts for an estimated 14 percent of premature births and 10 percent of infant deaths. There is some evidence that smoking may cause impotence in men. Because smoking affects so many of the body's systems, smokers often have vitamin deficiencies and suffer oxidative damage caused by free radicals.
Free radicals are molecules that steal electrons from other molecules, turning the other molecules into free radicals and destabilizing the molecules in the body's cells.

Studies reveal that the more a person smokes, the more likely he is to sustain illnesses such as cancer, chronic bronchitis, and emphysema. But even smokers who indulge in the habit only occasionally are more prone to these diseases. Some brands of cigarettes are advertised as low tar, but no cigarette is truly safe. If a smoker switches to a low-tar cigarette, he is likely to inhale longer and more deeply to get the chemicals his body craves. A smoker has to quit the habit entirely in order to improve his health and decrease the chance of disease.

Though some people believe chewing tobacco is safer, it also carries health risks. People who chew tobacco have an increased risk of heart disease and mouth and throat cancer. Pipe and cigar smokers have increased health risks as well, even though these smokers generally do not inhale as deeply as cigarette smokers do. These groups have not been studied as extensively as cigarette smokers, but there is evidence that they may be at a slightly lower risk of cardiovascular problems but a higher risk of cancer and various types of circulatory conditions. Some research reveals that passive smokers, or those who unavoidably breathe in second-hand tobacco smoke, have an increased chance of many health problems such as lung cancer, asthma, and sudden infant death syndrome in babies.

Smokers' symptoms

Smokers are likely to exhibit a variety of symptoms that reveal the damage caused by smoking. A nagging morning cough may be one sign of a tobacco habit. Other symptoms include shortness of breath, wheezing, and frequent occurrences of respiratory illness, such as bronchitis. Smoking also increases fatigue and decreases the smoker's sense of smell and taste. Smokers are more likely to develop poor circulation, with cold hands and feet, and premature wrinkles.

Sometimes the illnesses that result from smoking come with little warning. For instance, coronary artery disease may exhibit few or no symptoms. At other times, there will be warning signs, such as bloody discharge from a woman's vagina, a sign of cancer of the cervix. Another warning sign is a hacking cough, worse than the usual smoker's cough, that brings up phlegm or blood, a sign of lung cancer.

Withdrawal symptoms

A smoker who tries to quit may expect one or more of these withdrawal symptoms: nausea , constipation or diarrhea , drowsiness, loss of concentration, insomnia, headache , nausea, and irritability.

When to call the doctor

Smokers should seek medical help if they want to quit smoking but are unable to do so, or if they exhibit signs of any of the illnesses associated with long-term tobacco use. Persons who are frequently around smokers should seek medical advice if they show any of the symptoms associated with illnesses caused by smoking since second-hand smoke can be more damaging to health than first-hand smoke.

Diagnosis

It is not easy to quit smoking. That is why it may be wise for smokers to turn to their physician for help. For the greatest success in quitting and to help with the withdrawal symptoms, smokers should talk over a treatment plan with their doctor or alternative practitioner. They should have a general physical examination to gauge their general health and uncover any deficiencies. They should also have a thorough evaluation for some of the serious diseases that smoking can cause.

Research shows that most smokers who want to quit benefit from the support of other people. It helps to quit with a friend or to join a group such as those organized by the American Cancer Society. These groups provide support and teach behavior modification methods that can help the smoker quit. The smoker's physician can often refer him to such groups.

Other alternatives to help with the withdrawal symptoms include nicotine replacement therapy in the form of gum, patches, nasal sprays, and oral inhalers. These are available by prescription or over the counter. A physician can provide advice on how to use them. They slowly release a small amount of nicotine into the bloodstream, satisfying the smoker's physical craving. Over time, the amount of gum the smoker chews is decreased and the amount of time between applying the patches is increased. This process helps wean the smoker from nicotine slowly. However, if the smoker smokes while taking a nicotine replacement, a nicotine overdose may occur.

The drug buproprion hydrochloride has shown some success in helping smokers quit. This drug contains no nicotine and was originally developed as an antidepressant.
It is not known exactly how buproprion works to suppress the desire for nicotine.

Alternative treatment

There are a wide range of alternative treatments that can help a smoker quit the habit, including hypnotherapy, herbs, acupuncture, and meditation. For example, a controlled trial demonstrated that self-massage can help smokers crave less intensely, smoke fewer cigarettes, and in some cases completely give them up.

Prognosis

Research on smoking shows that 80 percent of all smokers desire to quit. But smoking is so addictive that fewer than 20 percent of the people who try ever successfully break the habit. Still, many people attempt to quit smoking over and over again, despite the difficulties—the cravings and withdrawal symptoms, such as irritability and restlessness.

For those who do quit, it is well worth the effort. The good news is that once a smoker quits the health effects are immediate and dramatic. After the first day, oxygen and carbon monoxide levels in the blood return to normal. At two days, nerve endings begin to grow back and the senses of taste and smell revive. Within two weeks to three months, circulation and breathing improve. After one year of not smoking, the risk of heart disease is reduced by 50 percent. After 15 years of abstinence, the risks of health problems from smoking virtually vanish. A smoker who quits for good often feels a lot better too, with less fatigue and fewer respiratory illnesses.

Prevention

How do smokers give up their cigarettes for good and never go back to them again? Here are a few tips from the experts:

People should tell their friends and neighbors that they are quitting. Doing so helps make quitting a matter of pride.

They should chew sugarless gum or eat sugar-free hard candy to redirect the oral fixation that comes with smoking and to prevent weight gain.

They should eat as much as they want, but only low-calorie foods and drinks. They should drink plenty of water, which may help with the feelings of tension and restlessness that quitting can bring. After eight weeks, they will lose their craving for tobacco, so it is safe then to return to their usual eating habits.

They should stay away from situations that prompt smoking, avoiding other people who smoke and dining in the nonsmoking section of restaurants.

Parental concerns

Parents and guardians need to be aware of the power they have to influence the development of their kids throughout the pre-teen and teenage years. Adolescence brings a new and dramatic stage to family life. The changes that are required are not just the teen's to make; parents need to change their relationship with their teenager. It is best if parents are proactive about the challenges of this life cycle stage, particularly those that pertain to the possibility of experimenting with and using tobacco. Parents should not be afraid to talk directly to their kids about smoking, even if they have had problems with smoking themselves. Parents should give clear, nouse messages about smoking and its negative consequences on health. It is important for kids and teens to understand that the rules and expectations set by parents are based on parental love and concern for their wellbeing. Parents should also be actively involved and demonstrate interest in their teen's friends and social activities. Spending quality time with teens and setting good examples are essential. Even if tobacco use already exists in the teen's life, parents and families can still have a positive influence on their teen's behavior.

KEY TERMS

Antioxidant—Any substance that reduces the damage caused by oxidation, such as the harm caused by free radicals.

Chronic bronchitis—A smoking-related respiratory illness in which the membranes that line the bronchi, or the lung's air passages, narrow over time. Symptoms include a morning cough that brings up phlegm, breathlessness, and wheezing.

Emphysema—A chronic respiratory disease that involves the destruction of air sac walls to form abnormally large air sacs that have reduced gas exchange ability and that tend to retain air within the lungs. Symptoms include labored breathing, the inability to forcefully blow air out of the lungs, and an increased susceptibility to respiratory tract infections. Emphysema is usually caused by smoking.

Epinephrine—A hormone produced by the adrenal medulla. It is important in the response to stress and partially regulates heart rate and metabolism. It is also called adrenaline.

Flavonoid—A food chemical that helps to limit oxidative damage to the body's cells, and protects against heart disease and cancer.

Nicotine—A colorless, oily chemical found in tobacco that makes people physically dependent on smoking. It is poisonous in large doses.

Nicotine replacement therapy—A method of weaning a smoker away from both nicotine and the oral fixation that accompanies a smoking habit by giving the smoker smaller and smaller doses of nicotine in the form of a patch or gum.

Secondhand smoke—A mixture of the smoke given off by the burning end of a cigarette, pipe, or cigar and the smoke exhaled from the lungs of smokers.

Sidestream smoke—The smoke that is emitted from the burning end of a cigarette or cigar, or that comes from the end of a pipe. Along with exhaled smoke, it is a constituent of second-hand smoke.

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Smoking

Cigarette smoking has great societal and clinical significance. It is a major cause of several diseases, including a variety of cancers. The practice of cigarette smoking is pervasive; about a quarter of all adult Americans smoke cigarettes, and smoking rates are even higher in many other countries. Despite the high personal cost associated with cigarette smoking, it is a prototypical addictive disorder manifesting such features as tolerance, withdrawal, and chronic use. The peak age for smoking prevalence is between eighteen and twenty-five years. Retrospective data from the National Household Survey on Drug Abuse suggests that the average age of first use of tobacco products in 1999 among all persons who ever used in their lifetime was 15.4 for cigarettes, 20.5 for cigars, and 16.7 for smokeless tobacco across all age groups (Kopstein 2001). Data from the National Comorbidity Survey suggests that the onset of nicotine dependence is delayed for at least one year after the onset of daily smoking. Smoking rates decline among people who have reached their mid-twenties, but these declines are modest in comparison to other forms of substance use. This may be due to the fact that cigarette smoking is highly addictive, legal, and not immediately performance-impairing.

Nicotine, independently, yields the trademark effects of an addictive drug. It produces tolerance and physical dependence, and heightened doses produce euphoria and satisfaction (Corrigall 1999; USDHHS 1998). Smokers will not self-administer tobacco on a chronic basis if it does not contain nicotine. Nicotine is essential for the development and maintenance of a smoking habit. However, once nicotine dependence is established, cues related to nicotine release become greatly influential in controlling self-administration behaviors. When a cigarette is smoked, about 80 percent of the inhaled nicotine is absorbed in the lungs (Armitage et al. 1975). Absorption is both efficient and extremely rapid. Despite the overall recognition that the rapid onset of drug action promotes addictive drug use, it remains unclear why this is so. Researchers do not fully understand which characteristics of drug pharmacokinetics are most determinant of addictiveness.

Data published in 2002 suggest that smoking among American adolescents is fairly common, with 27 percent of twelfth graders, 18 percent of tenth graders, and 11 percent of eighth graders reporting that they had smoked in the past month (Johnston et al. 2002). This level of smoking prevalence represents a decline from peaks in the mid-1990s. Much less is known about the epidemiology of tobacco dependence in adolescents. Dependence is a term often correlated with addiction, and adolescent smokers are less likely to be diagnosed with tobacco dependence than are adult smokers (Colby et al. 2000), although many adolescent smokers consider themselves addicted. Adolescents who are dependent report the same symptoms as do dependent adults, including cravings, withdrawal, tolerance, and a desire to reduce smoking (Colby et al. 2000). Compared to adults at the same level of self-reported intake, adolescents who smoke are more likely to be diagnosed as dependent, which suggests that adolescents may be especially vulnerable to dependence or sensitive to the effects of nicotine (Kandel and Chen 2000).

Before they experiment with cigarettes, adolescents form beliefs and attitudes about the effects of smoking. These attitudes and beliefs prospectively predict both the onset and escalation of smoking. Many adolescents believe that there are no health risks related to smoking in the first few years, and they believe that they will stop smoking before any damage is done. Existing evidence suggests that adolescents and adults exhibit unrealistic optimism about the personalized risks of smoking (Arnett 2000; Weinstein 1999). Whether adolescents are any more likely than adults to underestimate the personalized risks of smoking is unclear.

Evidence indicates that as smokers become more dependent, there is a shift in the motivational basis for their tobacco use. Social motives and contextual factors are rated as influential to beginner smokers, while heavy smokers emphasize the importance of control over negative moods and urges, and the fact that smoking has become involuntary (Piper et al. 2004). When smoking becomes less linked to external cues and more linked to internal stimuli, smokers are classified as dependent. There is also evidence suggesting that smoking cigarettes may lead to the use of illicit drugs. Cigarette smoking is endemic among substance abusers, with rates as high as 74 percent to 88 percent (Kalman 1998), compared to 23 percent of the general population (CDC 2002).

Greater parental education is associated with less likelihood of smoking in offspring. Additionally, girls appear to be more influenced by peer smoking than boys (Mermelstein 1999). In the United States, the highest smoking rates are among American Indian and Alaska Native adolescents, followed by whites and then Hispanics, with lowers rates among Asian Americans and African Americans. While studies that sample multiethnic groups are sparse, research has suggested that African American and Asian American adolescents report stronger antismoking socialization messages from parents and that African American parents report feeling particularly empowered to influence their children’s smoking (for reviews, see Mermelstein 1999; USDHHS 1998). Peer smoking is a relatively weak predictor of smoking for African American adolescents compared to white adolescents.

Adolescents sometimes start smoking as a result of self-image. The social image of an adolescent smoker is an ambivalent one, with negative aspects but also images of toughness, sociability, and precocity that may be particularly valued by “deviance-prone” adolescents who are at risk to smoke (Barton et al. 1982). Additionally, adolescents may start smoking and continue smoking because of their perception of the effect that smoking has on weight control and dieting. The belief that smoking can control body weight has been shown to predict smoking initiation among adolescent girls, but not boys (Austin and Gortmaker 2001). In addition, this belief is held more widely by white girls than by African American girls (Klesges et al. 1997). Despite the above-mentioned indicators, peer smoking is the most consistently identified predictor of adolescent smoking (Derzon and Lipsey 1999). In addition to cigarette smoking by peers, affiliation with peers who engage in high levels of other problem behaviors also prospectively predicts smoking initiation, as does self-identification with a high-risk social group (Sussman et al. 1994).

The tobacco industry spends millions of dollars per day on advertising and promotional materials to keep their products in the public eye. Beyond such reminders of the availability of tobacco products, smoking is not an easy habit to break. Smokers must not only break the physical addiction to nicotine, but also the habit of lighting up at certain times of the day. Successful quitters confess that quitting is often a lengthy process that involves several unsuccessful attempts. Although one-third of smokers attempt to quit each year, 90 percent or more of those who attempt to quit will fail.

Nicotine replacement therapies (NRTs) have been used to help some people quit smoking. The two most common forms of NRTs are chewing gum and the nicotine patch, both of which are available over the counter. Nicorette, a prescription chewing gum containing nicotine, is often used to help reduce the consumption of nicotine over time. Users have reported experiencing fewer cravings for nicotine as the dosage is reduced, until they are completely weaned. The nicotine patch was first marketed in 1991 for smokers with a desire to quit. Generally, the nicotine patch is used in conjunction with a comprehensive smoking-behavior cessation program. Additionally, a nicotine nasal spray, nicotine inhaler, and nicotine pill have been approved by the FDA to help cigarette smokers quit smoking. In order to prevent the initiation and maintenance of smoking, there has been an increase since the mid-1980s in the development and implementation of smoking cessation and prevention programs, especially for young people and adolescents.

Approximately 80 percent of the world’s 1.1 billion smokers live in low- and middle-income countries. In 1998 about four million people died of tobacco-related disease worldwide (WHO 1999). This number is projected to increase to ten million annually by 2030, with 70 percent of these deaths occurring in low-income countries. Death counts of this magnitude could be prevented if current smokers quit, but it is rare for smokers living in low- to middle-income countries to attempt to quit smoking (Jha and Chaloupka 2000). Although few dispute that smoking is damaging to human health on a global scale (Peto and Lopez 2000), governments have avoided taking action to control smoking. This is mainly due to concerns that such interventions might have harmful economic consequences, such as permanent job losses. Despite these concerns, several common measures aimed at the control of smoking, such as higher tobacco taxes, consumer information, bans on advertising and promotion, and regulatory policies, have had a significant impact. Each will be discussed below.

An increase in tobacco taxes is the single most effective intervention to reduce the demand for tobacco. A review by Prabhat Jha and Frank Chaloupka (2000) suggests that a price increase of 10 percent would reduce smoking by 4 percent in high-income countries and by about 8 percent in low- and middle-income countries. This evidence also implies that young people, individuals on low incomes, and those with less education are more responsive to price changes (Chaloupka et al. 2000). Policies to improve the quality and extent of tobacco information can also reduce smoking, particularly in lowand middle-income countries. For example, in the 1960s and 1970s, the promulgation in the United States and Britain of new evidence on the health risks of smoking helped reduce consumption between 4 and 9 percent. In addition, warning labels on cigarette packages were also found to reduce consumption during that era (Kenkel and Chen 2000). In a review of 102 countries and econometric analyses of income, Henry Saffer and Chaloupka (2000) revealed that bans on advertising and promotion led to considerable reductions in tobacco consumption.

Enforcing regulatory policies designed to prevent smoking in public places, worksites, and other facilities can also significantly reduce cigarette consumption worldwide (Yurekli and Zhang 2000). Attempts to impose restrictions on the sale of cigarettes to young people in high-income countries have mostly been unsuccessful (Siegel et al. 1999). Furthermore, it may be difficult to implement and enforce such restrictions in low-income countries. Evidence indicates that freer trade in tobacco products has led to an increase in smoking and other types of tobacco use. One solution is for countries to adopt measures that effectively reduce demand and apply those measures to both imported and domestically produced cigarettes (Taylor et al. 2000).

Johnston, Lloyd D., Patrick M. O’Malley, Jerold Bachman, and John E. Schulenberg. 2002. National Survey Results on Drug Use from the Monitoring the Future Study, 1975-2002. Vol. 1: Secondary School Students. Rockville, MD: U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Public Health Service, and National Institutes of Health.

Kalman, David. 1998. Smoking Cessation Treatment for Substance Misusers in Early Recovery: A Review of the Literature and Recommendations for Practice. Substance Use and Misuse 33: 2021-2047.

Kandel, Denise B., and Kevin Chen. 2000. Extent of Smoking and Nicotine Dependence in the United States, 1991-1993. Nicotine and Tobacco Research 2: 263-275.

U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (USDHHS). 1998. Tobacco Use among US Racial/Ethnic Minority Groups: African Americans, American Indians, and Alaska Natives, Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders, Hispanics, Report of the Surgeon General. Atlanta, GA: USDHHS, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, National Center for Chronic Disease Prevention and Health Promotion, Office on Smoking and Health.

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Smoking

Encyclopedia of Children and Childhood in History and Society
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group Inc.

Smoking

Tobacco use and cultivation originated in South America and spread northward through the Americas, reaching the upper Mississippi Valley by 160 c.e. An important part of the Columbian exchange, tobacco took root in western Europe in the late sixteenth century, and then in Africa and the Asian mainland in the seventeenth century. Though Europeans first regarded tobacco as a medicinal herb, they discovered that the real demand was of a recreational nature. By the mid-1600s tobacco had joined alcohol and caffeine as one of the world's three great social drugs and had become an important source of revenue for colonial planters, merchants, and tax collectors.

Early Modern and Modern Tobacco Use

Early modern tobacco rituals varied by geography, class, and local custom. Some users preferred pipes, others chewing tobacco, others snuff. Though governments imposed different regulations and levels of taxation, a few generalizations hold across nations and cultures. Men used tobacco more often than women. Tobacco use typically began in childhood or adolescence. The more abundant the local supply, the larger the crop of neophytes and the sooner they started. Children as young as seven smoked in Britain's Chesapeake colonies, where tobacco pipes were nearly as ubiquitous as tobacco plants.

Tobacco initiation was a social process. It signified coming of age, that a boy was taking on the attributes of a man. Tobacco enhanced standing among male peers. It provided an occasion for relaxation and conviviality. Only later, as tobacco users became dependent on nicotine and suffered withdrawal symptoms in its absence, did the motive for consuming tobacco change. This reversal of effects is the single most consistent pattern running through the history of smoking. Children and adolescents began smoking for social reasons. They continued to smoke, often after they wished they could quit, because they had become addicted.

Knowing that youthful indulgence in tobacco led to a lifelong habit, and knowing that the habit was dirty, dangerous, and unhealthful, many parents, especially those of middle-class standing or pious temperament, discouraged children from using tobacco. Girls' use was considered particularly unseemly, though boys courted a whipping as well. The writer Samuel Clemens (1835–1910), better known as Mark Twain, admitted to smoking at age nine–privately at first, then in public only after his father died two years later. To acquire a supply, he and his friends traded old newspapers to the local tobacconist for cheap cigars.

That Clemens smoked, rather than chewed or sniffed, tobacco symbolized a broader nineteenth-century trend. Oral use remained popular in a few places, such as Iceland or Sweden, but elsewhere children's initiation into tobacco use increasingly meant initiation into smoking. Cigarette smoking was especially dangerous and addictive, because smoke could be inhaled into the lungs, where it delivered a powerful dose of nicotine directly to the bloodstream. At first store-bought cigarettes, hand-rolled specialty products aimed at the carriage trade, were too expensive for most children to afford. Then, in the 1880s, James B. Duke (1856–1925) transformed the industry with machine-production techniques. Prices dropped and use expanded. The United States, where per capita cigarette consumption increased tenfold between 1900 and 1917, was the epicenter of the first global cigarette revolution.

City boys were among the most avid consumers of Duke's products, and their insouciant smoking proved a powerful affront to bourgeois morality. Evangelical and progressive reformers attacked cigarettes on moral and health grounds, blaming "the little white slaver" for ruining children's health, encouraging intemperance, and poisoning the race. But such legislative barriers as they managed to erect (fifteen states outlawed some aspect of cigarette manufacture, distribution, or promotion) were soon swept aside. Widespread military use during World War I, Hollywood valorization, and mass advertising, including a successful campaign to recruit female smokers–the fastest growing segment of the market during the 1920s, 1930s, and 1940s–all helped legitimate cigarettes. Smoking's ordinariness became its best defense. Laws banning sale to minors persisted, though vending machines and mothers' purses provided easy means of circumvention. Youthful smoking became unremarkable, even de rigueur. Those who didn't smoke, the writer John Updike remembered, got nowhere in the Pennsylvania high-school society of the late 1940s. Updike's Irish contemporary and fellow writer Frank McCourt recalled his friends asking him, incredulously, how he could possibly go out with girls if he didn't smoke.

The accumulation of evidence that smoking caused cancer and other deadly diseases, which reached a critical mass in the early 1950s, threatened the prosperity of cigarette companies. They tried to defuse the crisis through public relations, suggesting that the jury was still out on the health question. This was, at best, a delaying tactic. The growing medical data eventually led to declining adult domestic consumption, heavier taxation, and increased regulation–the broad pattern in Western societies during the last third of the twentieth century.

Confronted with decreasing demand in North America and Europe, multinational companies like Philip Morris and British-American Tobacco adopted a two-pronged strategy. First, they recruited teenage smokers to replace the adults who died or quit, using advertising to suggest that smokers were independent, sexually potent, and disdainful of authority–in a word, cool. A social fact, that cigarettes served as accessories of teenage identity (and, for girls, of thinness), became a means of recruiting those who would ultimately come to depend on cigarettes as nicotine-delivery vehicles. Where advertisements were banned, companies devised alternative promotions, such as colorful logo tee shirts, or company-sponsored sporting events aimed at getting brand names and package colors before a youthful audience.

Smoking in the Developing World

Overseas expansion was the second means of acquiring new customers. In the 1970s, cigarette companies began to move more aggressively into developing nations. By the decade's end, smoking was up 33 percent in Africa, 24 percent in Latin American, and 23 percent in Asia. By 2001, of the approximately 1.1 billion people who smoked worldwide, 80 percent lived in the developing world. As in the industrialized nations, these smokers had started young. Most were male, although in a few cultures, such as the Maori–relative newcomers to cigarettes–women outnumbered men among smokers under the age of twenty-four. In China, where smoking remained a largely male pastime, advertisers targeted young women, hoping to enlarge the market, just as their predecessors had in the United States after World War I.

Western cigarettes also displaced traditional means of tobacco consumption. During the 1970s, Bangladeshi smokers put aside their hookahs and bidis (cheap, hand-rolled cigarettes) for manufactured brands. The change was particularly noticeable among young people, who saw cigarettes as a way to differentiate themselves from older generations. Advertisers encouraged the impulse, pitching brands like Diplomat (Ghana) or High Society (Nigeria) that connoted worldly success and Western values. Brand consciousness developed at an early age. By century's end 29 percent of South African five-year-olds could recognize specific brands of cigarettes. In Jordan 25 percent of adolescent children aged thirteen to fifteen said company representatives had offered them free cigarettes.

The result was a growing public-health crisis. According to the World Bank, by 1996 developing nations were losing $66 billion a year to smoking-related illnesses. Because the most serious effects of cigarettes did not begin to appear until twenty years or thirty years later, epidemiologists forecast worse to come. The World Health Organization (WHO) predicted 10 million tobacco-related deaths annually by 2030. Fully 50 percent of those in developing countries who began smoking would die of smoking-related diseases. Half again of that 50 percent would die in middle age, losing years of productive life and wasting the social resources that had been invested in their upbringing and education. In essence, tobacco companies' globalized drive for profit and survival had lured another, even larger generation into the pulmonary minefield. In 2001 alone, between 64,000 and 84,000 young people in the developing world began smoking every day.

Despite the health threat and economic consequences, governments in developing nations did little to challenge the cigarette's spread, typically imposing fewer restrictions on advertising and marketing than did their Western equivalents. As of 2001, forty nations required no warnings on cigarettes. Others permitted warnings in English, rather than the native language. Restrictions on advertising, where enacted, were often indifferently enforced. Few regulations governed the levels of tar in cigarettes, which were often higher than those sold in Western nations.

Alarm over this regulatory vacuum and the lethal, mounting consequences of smoking in developing nations has provoked an increasingly vocal public health response, a situation reminiscent of attempts to negotiate controls on the international narcotic traffic in the early twentieth century (a historical parallel that the industry's critics have not been shy about developing). Several international organizations, including the WHO, have proposed global treaties aimed at curtailing, or at least slowing, sales of cigarettes and other tobacco products. The highest profile effort has been the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC), a comprehensive regulatory scheme that includes such provisions as restrictions on tobacco advertising, promotion, and sponsorship that target minors. In May 2003 the World Health Assembly adopted the FCTC; at this writing the treaty awaits ratification by member nations.

bibliography

Courtwright, David T. 2001. Forces of Habit: Drugs and the Making of the Modern World. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

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smoking

smoking Tobacco is believed to have been grown in the Americas for many thousands of years, and native Americans are thought to have discovered ways of using the plant, including smoking the leaves, a thousand years before Christ. A pottery vessel, found in Guatemala, dated earlier than the eleventh century, depicts a Mayan smoking a roll of tobacco leaves tied with string. Landing at San Salvador in 1492, Columbus was presented with dried fragrant leaves, but threw them away, not realizing the value placed on them by the natives. Rodrigo de Jerez was probably the first European smoker, learning of the practice from Cubans in the 1490s and taking the habit back to Spain. He was imprisoned by the Holy Inquisitors for seven years, but the practice was common by the time he was released. By the middle of the sixteenth century, smoking of tobacco was known in Mexico, Santa Domingo, Cuba, Brazil, Canada (in Montreal), France, Holland, Portugal, Spain, Germany, and Britain. It spread eastwards to Turkey and Poland by the 1580s, and in 1586 the first cautionary remarks about its use were made in Germany, where it was described as the ‘violent herb’. The smoking habit was spread largely by sailors, who both experienced it on their journeys and brought back supplies for continuing use at home. Certainly the naval explorers Sir John Hawkins and Sir Francis Drake, or at least their crews, brought back supplies and made use of the leaves. It was Sir Francis Drake who introduced tobacco to Sir Walter Raleigh in 1585, and, as the story goes, a servant finding Raleigh smoking thought he was on fire and drenched him with beer. Tobacco was smoked in various ways — rolled into a cigar, as cigarettes made with reed stems, and in pipes. Raleigh, while not the originator of smoking in England, did much to improve the method of curing the leaf, and popularized it amongst the courtiers of his day. The rich would smoke the leaf in silver pipes, while in the taverns clay pipes filled with smouldering tobacco would be passed from hand to hand. The poor man made do with a walnut shell and a straw stem. The price of tobacco was high, the purchaser getting enough leaf to balance the silver coins placed on the other pan of the scales. Numerous claims were made for the benefits of tobacco, such as prevention of toothache, falling fingernails, worms, hallitosis, lockjaw, and cancer. In 1566, Catherine de Medici, Queen of France, received snuff (powdered tobacco) to treat her migraine, and later decreed it Herba Regina.

The impact of tobacco, particularly in Europe, was considerable, and often contradictory. For example, importation of tobacco from the colonies prompted governments to impose a heavy duty, which in turn encouraged smuggling, bootlegging, and attempts to grow tobacco at home. In 1604, James I published a ‘counterblaste’ against tobacco, concluding that smoking was‘a custom lothsome to the eye, hateful to the nose, harmefull to the braine, daungerous to the lungs, and in the blacke stinking fume thereof, nearest resembling the horrible Stigian smoke of the pit that is bottomelesse’.

In the colonies it was realized that the Spanish leaf (Nicotiana tabacum) was superior to the indifferent leaf found in the colonies (Nicotiana rustic), and English colonials were very influential in setting up the tobacco growing industry in Virginia and Maryland, to the obvious advantage to trade. Indeed, an article in the Washington Post in 1997, by Susan de Ford, was entitled ‘Tobacco: the noxious weed that built a nation’ — referring here, of course, to the US. In the Americas a special tax levied in 1693 helped establish the college of William and Mary at Williamsburg, and in the nineteenth century Duke University in North Carolina was founded on tobacco. Spenser's Fairy Queen, published in 1590, contains the earliest poetical allusion to tobacco. Six years later Ben Jonson's Every Man is his humor has a scene in which an argument about tobacco is played out. By 1614 there were 7000 tobacconists' shops in London alone. Cigarettes became the most popular form of tobacco, use by the 1880s, made by huge corporations, particularly in the US, supplying the worlds' smoking needs: pipes were in decline. The taking of snuff and the use of chewing tobacco are now almost extinct, although dedicated pipe smokers and cigar devotees are still to be found.

Over the years increasing statistical evidence related smoking to cardiovascular and lung disease, especially bronchitis, emphysema, and cancer. It is undoubtedly true that the pleasures of smoking are derived from the actions of nicotine on the central nervous system. Nicotine is rapidly absorbed from the mucosal membrane of the mouth and from the lungs, and readily penetrates the nervous system. It also has peripheral actions, tending to increase blood pressure and heart rate. The Surgeon-General's Report in the US in 1964 was the real start of the campaign to prevent or abolish smoking. Vested interests in the tobacco companies promoted ideas to reduce the harmful effects by the introduction of filters and creation of low tar cigarettes. It is the carcinogenic compounds in the tar which are the serious hazard to health, and some, but not all, of these compounds are removed by the filters. People changing to cigarettes with low nicotine content tend to smoke more and draw more deeply. Artificial smoking materials have been developed, consisting of pure cellulose-based material impregnated with nicotine. However, combustion of all plant material, and of pure cellulose, seems to produce some carcinogenic agents. The ultimate in the safe cigarette consists of a hollow tube which is not ignited but releases nicotine as the ‘smoker’ draws air through. Nicotine chewing gum and nicotine patches, which release the alkaloid when applied to the skin, have also been produced as substitutes, largely for those who are breaking the habit.

The taking of nicotine is habit forming, indeed it can be described as addictive. The balance of psychological to physical dependence is generally more towards the former, as physical withdrawal symptoms are less severe than with drugs such as heroin. However, individual tobacco addicts vary enormously in their level of dependence. Some of the pleasures of smoking are due to ritual — particularly so in pipe smokers, who carry a variety of equipment for preparing for a satisfying smoke. Many smokers never do so in the dark, for the curl of the smoke from the pipe or cigarette end is part of the ritualistic satisfaction. Many psychological tests have shown that mental activity and performance is enhanced by smoking, particularly when fatigued — but the young often take up smoking to imitate their peers or idols. Serious programmes to stop people smoking or to prevent the young from starting are now being offered, particularly in the Western world, and the number of public places in which smoking is acceptable has greatly reduced.

To understand why smoking is still so common, despite all that is known about its effects, it is necessary to appeal to experiments made in model systems. In the brain a tract of nerve fibres run from the ventral tegmental area (VTA) of the mesolimbic dopamine system to the nucleus accumbens (NA). When this tract of nerve fibres is activated, dopamine is released in the NA. Application of nicotine to the VTA also causes dopamine release in the NA. Experimental animals which have been trained to self-administer nicotine by lever pressing fail to do so if the mesolimbic pathway from the VTA to the NA is cut. Thus, in this experimental paradigm, release of dopamine in the NA seems to be part of a reward response which reinforces administration. More importantly, other addictive drugs, such as amphetamine, cocaine, or morphine, also cause dopamine release in the NA. Most drugs when administered repeatedly result in desensitization — the cell membrane receptors upon which the drug acts fail to respond or they ‘down regulate’, meaning that the number of receptors decreases, thus limiting the response. This is the basis of tolerance. In the case of nicotine receptors in the brain, the numbers increase with continued and repeated administration of the drug, though not uniformly in all areas of the brain. How this increased number of receptors is related to tolerance is unknown. Tolerance to nicotine does exist, for obviously smokers are used to low levels of nicotine for much of their waking hours and have increased numbers of nicotinic receptors. Yet the non-smoker who for one reason or another takes a cigarette or cigar often shows profound effects not only in the psyche but in the periphery as well, often vomiting and feeling very unwell. Stories of fathers making their children smoke a cigar if caught trying to smoke have claimed lifelong cures by this ruse. Finally, nicotinic receptors are so called because they can be activated by nicotine, as well as by the natural transmitter acetylcholine. Activation of the dopaminergic mesolimbic system by release of acetylcholine in the VTA is presumably involved with pleasurable feelings, even in non smokers.

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Smoking

Dictionary of American History
COPYRIGHT 2003 The Gale Group Inc.

SMOKING

SMOKING. Tobacco, as it is most often smoked today, is largely derived from the Nicotiana tabacum plant, a broad-leafed herb native to the Americas and a member of the nightshade family, to which potatoes and sweet peppers also belong. The indigenous peoples of the Americas used the plant in many different kinds of religious and medical rituals, though no one knows what kinds of health hazards may have been recognized. A Mayan pottery vessel from about the ninth century a.d. shows a man smoking a roll of tobacco leaves tied with a string; Columbus found natives puffing away on tobacco pipes when he arrived in the West Indies in the fifteenth century. Tobacco later became an important staple in the American export economy, with many Southern slave states earning much of their income from tobacco sales and exports.

Pipes, snuff, and chewing tobacco were the most common forms of ingestion prior to the twentieth century. Cigarette smoking did not become popular until the end of the nineteenth century, following the invention of the Bonsack rolling machine in 1884 and flue curing, which gave a milder taste to tobacco smoke, making it easier to inhale. Cigarette smoking was also promoted by the development of mass tobacco advertising and the encouragement of national governments, which recognized tobacco as an easy source of tax revenues. Cigarettes were included with the rations of soldiers fighting in World War I; hundreds of thousands of men returned from combat

hooked on the new and fashionable drug. The net effect was a spectacular rise in smoking in the first six decades of the twentieth century. So whereas Americans in 1900 smoked only about fifty cigarettes per adult per year; this would grow by a factor of about eighty over the next sixty years. U.S. smoking rates peaked in 1964, when men and women were smoking an average of 4,300 cigarettes per person per year. Some people smoked more than 20,000 cigarettes per year.

Between 1893 and 1927, fifteen American states banned the sale of cigarettes. Anti-tobacco sentiments were often linked to campaigns to prohibit the sale of alcohol, and although both movements stressed the "moral dangers" accompanying such indulgences, health concerns were also beginning to come into play. Tobacco had been shown to be a health threat in the eighteenth century, when cancers of the nasal passages and lips were linked to smoking. In the nineteenth century, French scientists found that the overwhelming majority of people suffering from cancer of the mouth were pipe smokers. German scholars in the 1920s and 1930s established the lung cancer link, and by the 1950s in both Europe and America, a broad medical consensus had been established that cigarettes were responsible for many serious ailments, including cancer and heart attacks. Many national governments were slow to admit the hazard, however, having become dependent on tobacco taxation as a source of national income. Germany in the 1930s, for example, earned nearly one-twelfth of its total revenue from tobacco taxes, and England in the 1950s earned about 14 percent of its tax revenue from tobacco.

In 1964, the United States Surgeon General's Report on Smoking declared cigarettes a major source of health hazards, prompting a decline in U.S. cigarette consumption. By 1994 only about one in four Americans over the age of sixteen was a smoker, and per capita consumption had declined as well—to about 2,500 cigarettes per adult per year. Warning labels had been put on tobacco packaging in the 1960s, though tobacco companies had managed to soften the blow somewhat by camouflaging the labels. New forms of advertising were also sought to compensate for the 1970 ban on television advertising. Tobacco companies became major sponsors of many sporting events (such as race-car driving and tennis) and began to pay actors to smoke in Hollywood movies. Brown and Williamson, for example, in 1983 agreed to pay Sylvester Stallone $500,000 to use that company's tobacco products in each of his next five films.

Tobacco companies won all of the lawsuits filed against them in the 1960s, '70s, and '80s, arguing either that smoking had not been proven hazardous or that smokers themselves were to blame for their illnesses. Tobacco companies spent hundreds of millions of dollars challenging the medical link between smoking and disease. Front organizations such as the Council for Tobacco Research and the Tobacco Institute were established in the 1950s to "balance" the anti-smoking message with "no evidence of harm" propaganda. The industry abruptly changed its legal strategy in the 1990s, however, by conceding that the dangers of smoking had been well known for many decades. Companies began to hire historians to argue that smokers made an informed choice when they decided to take up smoking, and that blame for whatever risks this may have entailed must reside with the smoker.

Tobacco ads were banned on American television in 1970. The U.S. Congress banned smoking on airline flights of less than two hours in 1988, and in 1990 this was extended to all domestic flights. Anti-smoking policies were strengthened in the 1990s. Lawsuits were filed against manufacturers by states seeking to recover medical costs from smoking, and in 1998 the attorneys general of forty-six states agreed to accept a settlement of $206 billion from the five major tobacco companies to offset the public-health costs of smoking. Critics have charged that the increased costs can simply be passed on to consumers and that the settlement, to be paid out over twenty-five years, amounts to only about thirty or forty cents per pack in any event. The U.S. tobacco industry has also responded by shifting the focus of its sales overseas. Today the U.S. market is a shrinking component of U.S. tobacco sales, and more than one-third of the cigarettes manufactured in this country are now being smoked abroad. Philip Morris now sells three cigarettes abroad for every one sold in the United States.

Smoking today is generally regarded as the cause of a global cancer epidemic. While smoking still kills about half a million Americans every year—mainly from heart attacks and cancer—the figure is much higher in places like China, which has become the world's leading consumer of tobacco products. Lung cancer was an extremely rare disease at the beginning of the twentieth century, with only 142 cases recorded in the medical literature worldwide. By the end of the century it was the world's most common cause of cancer death. The World Health Organization has estimated that China is soon going to have a million lung cancer fatalities every year, the majority of these being caused by smoking. The number of Americans dying from lung cancer began to decline in the 1990s as a result of many people quitting, though teen smoking rates actually rose for most of that decade.

Smoking is growing rapidly worldwide, which is why we can expect the global lung cancer epidemic to continue. Global cigarette production in the year 2000 was more than 5.5 trillion cigarettes per annum, and growing. Since one lung cancer death is generated for every 2 to 4 million cigarettes smoked in any given society, we can expect more than 2 million lung cancer deaths per year, worldwide, in the not-too-distant future. Total deaths from other kinds of cigarette-related illnesses (and fires) will of course be greater than this, approaching 10 million per year by the 2020s according to World Health Organization estimates. Cigarettes must already have caused more than 100 million deaths since their invention, and the twenty-first-century toll could be as high as one billion. Anthropologists estimate that approximately 80 billion people have lived since the evolution of Homo sapiens, which means that by the end of the twenty-first century cigarettes may have killed more than 1 percent of everyone who has ever lived.

BIBLIOGRAPHY

Kluger, Richard. Ashes to Ashes: America's Hundred-Year Cigarette War, the Public Health, and the Unabashed Triumph of Philip Morris. New York: Knopf, 1996.

Parker-Pope, Tara. Cigarettes: Anatomy of an Industry from Seed to Smoke. New York: New Press, 2001.

Proctor, Robert N. Cancer Wars: How Politics Shapes What We Know and Don't Know about Cancer. New York: Basic Books, 1995.

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smoking

The Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th ed.

Copyright The Columbia University Press

smoking, inhalation and exhalation of the fumes of burning tobacco in cigars and cigarettes and pipes. Some persons draw the smoke into their lungs; others do not. Smoking was probably first practiced by the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere. Originally used in religious rituals, and in some instances for medicinal purposes, smoking and the use of tobacco became a widespread practice by the late 1500s. Tobacco was introduced into Europe by the explorers of the New World; however, many rulers prohibited its use and penalized offenders. By the end of the 19th cent. mass production of cigarettes had begun, and the smoking of cigarettes became prevalent as the use of cigars and pipes declined. Despite controversy as to the effects of smoking and bans on smoking by certain religious groups, the use of tobacco continued to increase.

Health Effects

Smoking is considered a health hazard because tobacco smoke contains nicotine, a poisonous alkaloid, and other harmful substances such as carbon monoxide, acrolein, ammonia, prussic acid, and a number of aldehydes and tars; in all tobacco contains some 4,000 chemicals. In 1964 definitive proof that cigarette smoking is a serious health hazard was contained in a report by the Surgeon General's Advisory Committee on Health, appointed by the U.S. Public Health Service. The committee drew evidence from numerous studies conducted over decades. They concluded that a smoker has a significantly greater chance of contracting lung cancer than a nonsmoker, the rate varying according to factors such as the number of cigarettes smoked per day, the number of years the subject smoked, and the time in the person's life when he or she began smoking. Cigarette smoking was also found to be an important cause of cancers of the esophagus, nasopharynx, mouth, larynx, kidney, and bladder as well as a cause of chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, emphysema, and heart disease, stroke, and other cardiovascular diseases. Since then it has been found to be an independent risk factor in male impotence. Smoking also increases risks associated with oral contraceptive use and exposure to occupational hazards, such as asbestos. Pipe and cigar smokers, if they do not inhale, are not as prone to lung cancer as cigarette smokers, but they are as likely to develop cancers of the mouth, larynx, and esophagus. Those who use snuff or chewing tobacco (sometimes called
"smokeless tobacco"
) run a greater risk of developing cancer of the mouth.

Inhalation of tobacco smoke by nonsmokers has been found to increase the risk of heart disease and respiratory problems; this has created a movement for smokeless environments in public spaces, including government buildings, office buildings, and restaurants. Fetal damage can be caused if a mother smokes or is exposed to smoke during pregnancy. Children of smokers have a higher risk of asthma and lung disease.

Regulation of Tobacco and Smoking

Because of mounting evidence of health risks, television advertisements for cigarettes were banned beginning in 1971. In the 1980s, Congress began to require stronger warning labels on all print advertising; soon afterward it banned smoking on domestic air flights. Concerns about the effects of tobacco smoke on nonsmokers led government and businesses to place additional restrictions on smoking in public, common, and work areas; more than two thirds of U.S. states now place some restrictions on smoking in public places.

A 1988 report of the Surgeon General of the United States recognized nicotine as an addictive substance, leading the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to consider treating nicotine as any other addictive drug and implementing stricter regulations. The authority of the FDA to regulate smoking was, however, denied by the Supreme Court. In 2009, however, the U.S. Congress passed legislation that allows the Food and Drug Administration to regulate cigarettes and other forms of tobacco; the law also imposed additional restrictions on the marketing of tobacco products. The habit of smoking continues to increase in the young despite the illegality of cigarette sales to those under 18 years of age in all 50 states.

The Framework Convention on Tobacco Control, a treaty adopted by World Health Organization members in 2003, seeks to reduce the number of tobacco-related illnesses and deaths by establishing international standards for antismoking measures; it entered into force in 2005. The convention restricts the marketing and sale of tobacco products and requires health warnings on packages of cigarettes. The treaty has been signed, but not ratified, by the United States. Indoor air quality laws, high taxes on tobacco, and measures against cigarette smuggling are encouraged under the pact.

Legal Battles

In the mid- and late 1990s the tobacco industry in the United States faced grave legal and financial threats. Under heavy attack from states seeking compensation to recover costs for smoking-related health care, from the federal government seeking further regulation, and from individual smokers seeking damages for illness, the major cigarette producers sought ways to protect themselves. After a tentative $368 billion settlement (1997) with state attorneys and plaintiffs' lawyers fell apart, lawsuits were brought against the industry by Florida, Minnesota, Mississippi, and Texas; the suits were settled for $40 billion, to be paid over 25 years. In 1998 the remaining 46 states accepted a $206 billion plan to settle lawsuits they had filed against the industry. Individual lawsuits continued to pose potential significant financial threats.

Bibliography

See publications of the Office on Smoking and Health of the Centers for Disease Control and publications of the American Cancer Society and the American Lung Association; see also E. C. Hammond, I. J. Selikoff, and J. Chung,
"Asbestos exposure, cigarette smoking and death rates"
from Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences (1979); R. J. Troyer and G. E. Markle, Cigarettes: The Battle over Smoking (1983); P. Taylor, The Smoke Ring (1984); Imperial Cancer Research Fund, World Health Organization, and American Cancer Society, Mortality from Smoking in Developed Countries 1950–2000 (1994); R. Kluger, Ashes to Ashes (1996); S. A. Glantz, J. Slade, L. A. Bero, P. Hanauer, D. E. Barnes, The Cigarette Papers (1996).

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Smoking

Encyclopedia of Aging
COPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc.

SMOKING

In some industrialized communities smoking prevalence in elderly people is as high as 30 percent, and smoking prevalence is highest in low socioeconomic groups so that those older people with smoking-related diseases may also have other poverty-related social and medical problems. In the United Kingdom the smoking-related disease epidemic has probably passed its peak in men but is reaching its peak in women—in whom the maximum smoking uptake began with those born in the 1920s and 1930s.

Almost all smoking-related diseases are more common in old age. Furthermore, the beneficial effects of quitting smoking are for the most part maintained into old age. The reduction in risk of myocardial infarction (heart attack) is certainly not affected by aging, so that an older smoker who quits reduces his or her heart attack risk almost to normal after about three years. Quitting smoking can reduce the complications of peripheral vascular disease (hardening of the arteries to the legs and feet) in both young and elderly sufferers. Quitting produces a reduced risk of lung cancer (and probably many other cancers) in old people as well as in the middle-aged. Though only about one-quarter of heavy smokers will develop smoking-related airways obstruction (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease) resulting in chronic respiratory disability, quitting smoking will stop the accelerated decline of lung function in sufferers from this condition independent of the age at which they quit, at least up to the age of eighty.

Recent research shows that stopping smoking in middle age may extend the life of men by over seven years and in particular reduces deaths from heart disease. Even in those with preexisting smoking related lung disease, quitting smoking may extend life by up to six years.

We thus know that quitting smoking gives health gains for elderly people, but are they able to quit? The simple answer is that they are probably overall just as likely to be able to stop as younger smokers, however the situation is complex. Nicotine is an extremely addictive substance and quitting is difficult. Simply being told to quit by a medical professional produces a quit rate of about two to three percent. The most important predictor of whether a smoker is able to quit is their motivation (often judged by previous failed attempts to quit). In motivated elderly people without drug help (nicotine replacement) quit rates can be as high as 15 percent—slightly higher perhaps than in the young. However, there has been little research work into the value and acceptability of nicotine replacement or other newer drug therapies in old people. Furthermore,
at least in the United States older smokers are, overall, probably less likely to want to quit than to accept advice that smoking is bad for them, however among those who do recognize the dangers there is greater motivation and urgency to quit and a higher success rate.

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Smoking

Nutrition and Well-Being A to Z
COPYRIGHT 2004 The Gale Group, Inc.

Smoking

Smoking is an important and preventable cause of death and illness. However, as more money has been spent on smoking cessation programs, the incidence of cigarette smoking has risen. In 2002, 48 percent of men and 12 percent of women in the world were smokers (World Health Organization). Tobacco consumption increased from 1,100 million individuals during the early 1990s to 1,300 million by the year 2000 (United Nations Economic and Social Council). At this rate, the number of tobacco-related deaths is projected to reach more than 9 million by the year 2020. The number of tobacco-related deaths increased from 4.2 million to 4.9 million between 2000 and 2002, meaning that more than nine people die due to smoking-related illnesses every minute.

Research indicates that tobacco causes more than twenty categories of fatal and disabling diseases, including lung cancer , cardiovascular disease, and respiratory diseases. However, tobacco is very addictive, and the majority of smokers have difficulty quitting even when they have a medical condition. For example, a 2000 study of 15,660 adults by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality found that 38 percent of people with emphysema, 25 percent of people with asthma , 20 percent of people with hypertension and cardiovascular problems, and 19 percent of people with diabetes continue to smoke. Although smoking was responsible for their health conditions, they perceived that, since their health conditions already exist, quitting would not have an affect on their future health and well-being.

A recent area of concern related to tobacco use has been nonsmokers' exposure to second-hand smoke. Parental smoking has been proven to contribute to increased rates of sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) in addition to chronic illnesses in children such as asthma, bronchitis, colds, and pneumonia . Pregnant women who chew tobacco, smoke, or are exposed to second-hand smoke have a higher risk of miscarriage and of giving birth to low birth weight babies, who are prone to infection. Women who smoke are more likely to be victims of primary and secondary infertility, to have delays in conceiving, and to have an increased risk of early menopause and low bone density ("Current Issues and Forthcoming Events"). Most women are unaware of these dangers. Not only can the expectant mother place her unborn fetus in danger, but she can also place herself at risk for future smoking-related diseases and early mortality.

Quitting smoking at any age improves life expectancy. The 2002 Cancer Prevention Study examined the benefits of smoking cessation in 877,243 men and women in the United States. Life expectancy of smokers who quit before age thirty-five was extended by 8.5 years in men and by 7.7 years in women. The study found that smokers who quit at any age are subjected to meaningful life extensions (Taylor, et al.). In addition to a life free from smoking-related diseases, an individual who quits smoking can experience increased longevity.

Internet Resources

United Nations Economic and Social Council (2002). "Secretary General's Report to the Economic and Social Council (ECOSOC) on the activities of the United Nations Ad-Hoc Interagency Task Force on Tobacco Control." Available from <http://www.un.org/esa/coordination/ecosoc/SG_UNTF_ECOSOC.pdf>

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Adolescent Smoking

Encyclopedia of Public Health
COPYRIGHT 2002 The Gale Group Inc.

ADOLESCENT SMOKING

In 1999, the Youth Risk Behavior Survey found that 35 percent of U.S. high school students were smokers and only 13.5 percent of them quit during high school. This represented a large increase since 1991, when 27.5 percent of high school students smoked. These facts frame key public health issues: Youth start smoking before the legal age, and therefore need societal protection from unreasonable influences (e.g., marketing) that encourage them to smoke. Teenagers tend to become more addicted than they expect, and they have trouble quitting.

Health-promotion programs to teach skills for managing social influences regarding smoking— or more broadly focused on life skills—have shown only modest success. Few if any effective cessation programs are currently available. In general, however, prevention programs are more effective if combined with comprehensive community programs for tobacco control. Multicomponent programs addressing individual, interpersonal, and organizational levels of behavior are likely to be the most effective because they influence the societal and cultural context in which adolescent smoking occurs. Regulations that increase price, control sales, or create nonsmoking areas can also help reduce adolescent smoking rates.

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smoking

smoking smoking pistol (or gun) a piece of incontrovertible incriminating evidence; on the assumption that a person found with a smoking pistol or gun must be the guilty party; particularly associated with Barber B. Conable's comment on a Watergate tape revealing President Nixon's wish to limit FBI involvement in the investigation.

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In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.

Citation styles

Encyclopedia.com gives you the ability to cite reference entries and articles according to common styles from the Modern Language Association (MLA), The Chicago Manual of Style, and the American Psychological Association (APA).

Within the “Cite this article” tool, pick a style to see how all available information looks when formatted according to that style. Then, copy and paste the text into your bibliography or works cited list.

Because each style has its own formatting nuances that evolve over time and not all information is available for every reference entry or article, Encyclopedia.com cannot guarantee each citation it generates. Therefore, it’s best to use Encyclopedia.com citations as a starting point before checking the style against your school or publication’s requirements and the most-recent information available at these sites:

Modern Language Association

The Chicago Manual of Style

American Psychological Association

Notes:

Most online reference entries and articles do not have page numbers. Therefore, that information is unavailable for most Encyclopedia.com content. However, the date of retrieval is often important. Refer to each style’s convention regarding the best way to format page numbers and retrieval dates.

In addition to the MLA, Chicago, and APA styles, your school, university, publication, or institution may have its own requirements for citations. Therefore, be sure to refer to those guidelines when editing your bibliography or works cited list.